Alumni News

Olympians Dunn, Merz, Coyne and Bye.

The four alumnae who won gold medals in women's ice hockey at the 1998 Winter Olympics were happy to come back to Durham for a Homecoming visit for a number of reasons.

First: hockey, or more specifically, women's ice hockey. "Not only our Olympic success, but the success of the UNH women's team (last year's national champions) acts as a springboard for women's athletics, and women's ice hockey," says Karyn Bye '93. To help promote the sport, the four agreed to host two ice hockey clinics at the Whittemore Center.

Second: nostalgia. "The four of us went down to Libby's last night," says Sue Merz, a 1994 graduate. "It was very déjà vu."

Third: friends. After playing and traveling together for seven months, the close-knit Olympic team members went their separate ways after the winter games. "We have all been going through withdrawal," says Colleen Coyne '93.

Merz, Coyne, Bye and Tricia Dunn '96 spent a soggy Homecoming day greeting football fans at half-time and signing hockey pucks at the alumni barbecue. Later, they led 40 girls and a few boys, ages 9 to 12, and 40 members of "Chicks with Sticks," a Durham women's recreational league, in the finer—and rougher—points of hockey during two clinics at Towse Rink.

The former teammates are doing their own thing now, as Merz puts it. Bye is "living out of a suitcase" between speaking engagements and her work as a part-time spokesperson for a new NHL team, the Minnesota Wild. Coyne intends to enroll in several UNH classes this spring. Dunn is writing a book on women's ice hockey with fellow Olympian Katie King, and Merz plays on a Senior Triple A team in Toronto.

All except Coyne have their eye on the 2002 Olympics. Recently, Bye, Merz and Dunn (and Brandy Fisher '98, picked last year as the best college women's ice hockey player in the nation) were chosen for the 1998 USA Hockey select team. "I'm still having fun," says Bye. "I hope to be in Salt Lake City, but one year at a time."

Alumni around the world can experience the excitement of UNH hockey once again through broad cast.com, a Web site that offers live WKXL-FM audio broadcasts of all UNH men's hockey games.

The site also provides audio for UNH football games, and archived tapes of past games. Underwritten by Friends of UNH Hockey, the site can be reached at http://www.unhwildcats.com/.

A "Black-Tie Gala" was held Oct. 3 in the "new" Dimond Library to celebrate the reopening of the expanded and renovated facility. Young P. Dawkins III, president of the UNH Foundation, was one of the speakers. Excerpts from his remarks:

"...This is one of those very rare nights in our collective lives that holds true magic. Magic because from here, from this great room, we think we can see just beyond the curve of the horizon and begin to make out the shapes and colors that comprise the bright future of this university. Daniel Burnham, one of the leading American architects of the turn of the century, said, "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood."

Young Dawkins III addresses library celebrants.

Clearly, Graham Gund (architect for the library project) agrees with that premise. And so do we. For we have made no small plans for the future of this university and hold no small ambitions.

The largest capital campaign in the history of the University of New Hampshire, with a goal of at least $100 million dollars, is now in the final stages of being fashioned. We are talking to friends like you, individually and in small groups, to make sure we have identified just the right areas for support, those key elements that will powerfully lift this university to its rightful place as the best and the smartest small public land-grant university in the nation. And make no mistake. Our journey has already begun.

Like all travelers on all journeys, we will need a fixed point of reference, a touch stone, our north star. And that will be the Dimond Library. Because we see so clearly in this building the heady outcome of ambition, hard work, generosity and dedication. We will refer to this library again and again over the coming years. And each time we do, we will be encouraged to do those things that are right, and good, and strong, for the University of New Hampshire. Because here, in the Dimond Library, we see that that ambition works.

I will conclude these remarks with an invitation to all of us, one that is extended by New Hampshire's and, I believe, America's, greatest poet, Robert Frost:

I'm going out to clean the pasture springs,
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(and wait to watch the water clear, I may)
I shan't be gone long...
You come, too.

Emboldened by this library and this night, we are now setting out to clear the University of New Hampshire's pasture springs. You come, too."

This summer, July 5-Aug. 13, a group of UNH students will spend six weeks in Cambridge, England, as participants in the 21st annual UNH Cambridge Summer Program. But one need not be a 20-something undergraduate to enroll. In fact, older students often seem to appreciate the Cambridge experience even more than their younger classmates.The program is housed in one of the oldest colleges of Cambridge University, Gonville and Caius College, located at the center of the city, a short walk from museums, historic sights, theaters, an outdoor marketplace, and shops of all descriptions. Students take two four-credit courses. This year's seven offerings—all given at both the graduate and undergraduate level—range from "Shakespeare in Performance" to "Travel Writing." Every weekend the program provides at least one bus tour to another part of England: London, Dover, Canterbury, Stratford-on-Avon and elsewhere. And students are free to travel on their own. For further information on the program, including a full list of course offerings, contact Joy Winston, UNH Summer Cambridge Program, Hamilton Smith Hall, Durham, NH, 03824, phone: (603) 862-3962, e-mail: . Or visit the web site at: http://cambridge.sr.unh.edu/.