Rio Olympics: Lots of North Carolina students around
Looking for athletes from North Carolina schools at the Rio Olympics? You’ll find them, though not where you would expect.
The Rio 2016 Olympics are finally underway and the Old North State has a fair footprint over the whole proceedings. This is because a number of Olympic athletes are students at one or another of the various schools in the state. This goes far beyond Harrison Barnes and Kyrie Irving, who helped defeat China yesterday.
In some cases it goes beyond the United States as a country. There are a number of athletes attending the state’s colleges and universities from other countries.
Irving may have been a previous Duke student but two more are competing down in Brazil as well. Leona Maguire will be playing for the Irish Women’s Golf team. Rebecca Quinn will hit the pitch as part of the Canadian Women’s Soccer team.
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Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte has Kendra Clarke on the Canadian Track and Field team.
The NC State Wolfpack must have one killer swim team since they have a number of swimmers in the Olympic field. Soren Dohl and Anton Ipsen both take the pool for Denmark. Simonas Bilas swims for Lithuania. Ryan Held is swimming for the Americans.
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Outside swimming, Lucas Kozeniesky will be on the United States shooting team for the Wolfpack.
Barnes is one of several UNC alums in the Olympics, but no current students are participating.
Queens University of Charlotte is contributing Patricia Castro-Ortega to the Spanish female swim team. They are also providing Dion Dreesens to the Netherlands swimming men’s team.
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This means that there are lots of athletes to potentially keep an eye out for besides the American team at the Olympics. In fact the North Carolina schools seem to have provided many current students to other teams rather than the US National Team. Keep them in mind as you watch the various NBC related networks to see who wins the gold.