She participated in the U.S. Scholar-Athlete Games in 1999, yet her recollections of her week at the Institute for International Sport and the University of Rhode Island remain vivid.

“It was an awesome week, learning about your sport and meeting kids from places like Oklahoma and Pennsylvania and Ohio and getting to know what their lives were like,” she said.

Jenn Murgo is 26 now and a special-education teacher at Rogers High School in Newport. Nine years ago, she was a rising senior, good student, model citizen and multi-sport athlete at Case High School in Swansea. She was typical of the 1,000 scholar-athletes and scholar-artists who visited URI that week and the 1,000 who will attend the 2008 U.S. Scholar-Athlete Games (SAG) June 28 to July 5 at URI.

These exceptional teenagers will come from every state and 20 foreign nations. They will learn about different customs and cultures, play hard on URI’s numerous fields and courts and demonstrate their talent for the visual and performing arts. They will participate in discussions, and listen to the thoughts of world figures.

Retired Gen. Colin Powell, secretary of state during President Bush’s first administration, will speak to them on July 1 at the Providence Performing Arts Center. His appearance will be open to the public.

Murgo was a soccer and basketball player and a track athlete at Case and registered for the 1999 Scholar-Athlete Games in track. She never competed, however, because of an injury she suffered in the long jump during a meet at Seekonk High. Rain the previous night had soaked the landing pit, leaving it densely packed instead of loose and cushiony. Murgo sprinted down the runway and leaped. When she landed, she felt a stab of pain in her leg.

“When I looked at the pit, it hadn’t been raked out. There was no give. When I landed, the bone snapped,” she said.

She had fractured her fibula, the smaller of the two bones in the lower leg. The good news that day was that the injury occurred after she had run the 100 and run a leg on the 4 x 100 relay team that set a school record that still stands. The bad news was that she was not running at the Scholar-Athlete Games.

Murgo needed only a soft cast and did not require crutches so when she arrived at URI, she looked normal. The injury was still healing, though, so she couldn’t run.

“At first I felt angry and upset that I couldn’t participate,” she said. A chance encounter with the parent of another runner changed her outlook.

“I met a kid from New Jersey, an amazing runner. His dad talked to me on the side. You’ll come back even stronger, he told me. So I decided to learn as much as I could from the Games, and I got a ton out of it. The experience was extremely memorable. The whole week everyone was on a high. And not just for athletics. They urged us to be leaders. People came to talk to you and said you should feel important because you’re a scholar, not just an athlete and to be good captains on your sports teams,” she said.

If sports were half the fun, people were the other half.

“It was the first time I met people from places like Mississippi and Sri Lanka,” Murgo said, a tinge of wonder still in her tone of voice.

“One day we went to the beach, and I sat next to a boy from Mississippi. He said, ‘Oh, my God! The bus driver is white!’ I said, ‘So.’ He said, ‘In Mississippi, all the bus drivers are black.’ We talked about that late into the night.”

Although she grew up in Massachusetts, Murgo feels like a Rhode Islander. Her parents were born in Rhode Island, and she felt as if Barrington were her back yard. She even attended St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket during her first year of high school to play basketball. As a result, she promoted one of Rhode Island’s summer treasures to her new friends.

“I remember introducing them to Del’s Lemonade, and they loved it.”

Democrat Bill Bradley, the former New Jersey senator, Princeton and New York Knicks basketball star, Rhodes Scholar and candidate for president, spoke to them about being responsible for their own future and their environment.

“I remember looking around at a thousand young athletes and feeling a sense of community among our peers. I felt like we were important to our future,” she said.

That feeling is exactly what Dan Doyle, founder of the World, U.S. and Rhode Island Scholar-Athlete Games and the Institute for International Sport, hopes to evoke in every participant. From the beginning, he has preached that sport can be a bridge between disparate cultures and political systems. He revels in telling of the year that two basketball players, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, played on the same team at the World Scholar-Athlete Games.

Doyle has also preached that scholar-athletes can make a difference in their communities, and Murgo is proof. She graduated from Assumption College in 2004, and after a brief fling in the insurance business decided to join the 15 members of her extended family who are teachers. She took two years to earn a master’s degree in education at Providence College and is working on another master’s in history from PC.

In addition to Powell’s July 1 appearance, other SAG highlights will be visits from environmentalist Claes Nobel on June 29 and technology pioneer and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Vint Cerf on June 30 and a session on Ethics in Journalism, with a focus on the Duke lacrosse case, also on June 30.

For schedules, ticket information and other details about the 2008 U.S. Scholar-Athlete Games, call the Institute for International Sport at 401-874-5088, e-mail ussag@internationalsport.com or visit internationalsport.com.

mszostak@projo.com