Checking in on how our three Kent State Olympians are doing at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris …
COREY CONNERS (CANADA), MEN’S GOLF – A two-time Mid-American Conference champion and All-American for the Golden Flashes, Conners is off to a solid start in his second appearance at the Olympics. Conners fired a 3-under-par 68 in the first round of the men’s golf tournament Aug. 1 at Le Golf National and sits in a tie for 14th place.
Conners was on track to finish near the top of the leaderboard after day one before a double-bogey – his second of the round – on the final hole dropped him into the pack. He’s still very much in the hunt for a gold medal, though, sitting five shots back of the leader, Hideki Matsuyama of Japan.
Conners, a two-time PGA Tour winner, is back in action today for the second round at Le Golf National, located just outside Paris. Play starts at 3 a.m. EDT. Rounds 3 and 4 will take place Saturday, Aug. 3 and Sunday, Aug. 4.
CHRIS ORTIZ (PUERTO RICO), MEN’S BASKETBALL – Puerto Rico opened Olympic pool play in Group C with a 90-79 loss to South Sudan on July 28, followed by a 107-66 setback to Serbia on July 31. Ortiz, a 6-8 power forward playing in his first Olympic Games, finished with 3 points, 2 assists, 2 rebounds and 1 blocked shot against South Sudan, then led all scorers in the game with Serbia with 19 points, hitting 4-of-7 shots from 3-point range. He also pulled down a game-high 6 rebounds and added 2 assists and 2 steals.
Next up for Puerto Rico: a daunting Aug. 3 date with LeBron James and Team USA, which has stampeded its way through Group C thus far with victories of 110-84 over Serbia and 103-86 over South Sudan. That game will conclude pool play for both teams.
The quarterfinals of the men’s basketball tournament begin Aug. 6. The top two teams in each of the three groups automatically advance to the quarterfinals, with the two best third-place teams also moving on to the quarterfinals. All other teams are eliminated from the competition.
DANNIEL THOMAS-DODD (JAMAICA), WOMEN’S SHOT PUT – The qualifying round of the women’s shot put competition doesn’t start until Aug. 8, so Thomas-Dodd, the 2017 NCAA national champion in the shot put, hasn’t been in action yet. But when she starts, she’ll be looking to make the finals for the first time in her three Olympic appearances. She almost made it at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games (held in 2021), missing out on a berth in the finals by just 0.2 meters.
Thomas-Dodd enters these Olympics as a legitimate gold medal contender – she has the 11th-best throw in the world this year and is ranked No. 9 in the shot put worldwide. The Olympic women’s shot put finals are scheduled for Aug. 9.
SOME KENT STATE OLYMPIC HISTORY
Kent State University lists three of its student-athletes as having combined to win five medals in the Olympics, beginning with the 1948 London Games and ending with the 1984 Los Angeles Games. That medal count is two gold, two silver and one bronze. We’ll go into more detail on those shortly.
But first, the university should expand that list by one athlete and one gold medal. Ronnie Harris of Team USA won boxing gold in the lightweight division (132 pounds) at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Here was Harris’ path to gold in the 1968 Games:
– Round of 64: bye
– Round of 32: defeated Lee Chang-kyi (South Korea) on points, 5-0
– Round of 16: defeated John Stracey (Great Britain) on points, 4-1
– Quarterfinal: defeated Mohamed Muruli (Uganda) on points, 5-0
– Semifinal: defeated Calistrat Cutov (Romania) on points, 5-0
– Final: defeated Josef Grudzein (Poland) on points, 5-0 (won gold medal)
Harris isn’t on Kent State’s official Olympic count because he attended Kent State Stark, the university’s satellite campus in Jackson Township, and not the main campus in Kent. Jay Fiorello, associate director of athletics communications at Kent State, uncovered this information for Round 2 and suggested that Harris be counted among Kent State’s Olympic medalists, and he’s absolutely right.
A Kent State student is a Kent State student regardless of which university branch they attend. And Ronnie Harris was a Kent State student.
And an Olympic gold medalist.
MORE THAN JUST AN OLYMPIAN
Harris, a Canton native who is now 75, had an accomplished boxing career outside the Olympics. He won the National AAU lightweight championship in 1966, 1967 and 1968, turning professional in 1971 and remaining undefeated until 1978. That year, he fought WBC and WBA champ Hugo Pastor Corro of Argentina for the undisputed world middleweight title, losing a split decision in a 15-round bout in Buenos Aires.
At one point in his career, Harris defeated future middleweight world champion Alan Minter. Harris retired from professional boxing in 1982.
So Kent State not only has an Olympic boxing gold medalist, it nearly had the world middleweight champ, too.
MORE MEDALS
Kent State’s other two Olympic golds were won by Peter George and Gerald Tinker, with George winning three medals in weightlifting for Team USA over the course of three Olympics.
George, an Akron native, earned the silver medal at middleweight (75 kg) at the 1948 London Games, then came back four years later to capture gold in the same division at the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki. He capped his Olympic career with another silver medal, again at middleweight, in the 1956 Melbourne Games.
Outside of the Olympics, George won five World Championships: in 1947, 1951, 1953, 1954 and 1955. He also set four world records.
Tinker, meanwhile, was a member of the United States’ gold medal-winning 4×100-meter relay team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Tinker and his three teammates — Larry Black (Tinker’s cousin), Robert Taylor and Eddie Hart – clocked a world record-tying time of 38.19 seconds in the finals, with Tinker running the third leg of the relay.
At Kent State, Tinker won the 60-yard dash at the 1973 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships – covering that distance in 6.0 seconds – but he was more than just a track star. Tinker also excelled in football, starring in high school in Coral Gables, Florida, before going on to star as a wide receiver and return specialist at Kent State, playing on the Golden Flashes’ iconic 1972 Mid-American Conference championship team.
Tinker was selected by the Atlanta Falcons in the 2nd round (44th overall pick) of the 1974 NFL Draft as a wide receiver. He played for the Falcons (1974–75) and the Green Bay Packers (1975).
That brings us to Thomas Jefferson, who won the bronze medal in the 200 meters for Team USA at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. As a Golden Flash, the Cleveland native won both the 100 and 200 meters at the 1985 Mid-American Conference Championships.
So there’s your trip down memory lane, Kent State Olympics-style. Besides Jay Fiorello, thanks also go out to Emily Vincent, Kent State’s director of media relations, and Rachel Abbey McCafferty, my colleague at The Portager, for their efforts in tracking down information for this column. It certainly was a fun, interesting and educational journey through the past.
And by the end of it, we reached a new KSU Olympic tally: three golds, two silvers and one bronze. And who knows? Maybe that total will grow in Paris over the course of the next week or two.
Stay tuned.
Tom Hardesty is a Portager sports columnist. He was formerly assistant sports editor at the Record-Courier and author of the book Glimpses of Heaven.