As the home for some of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the nation, the Ivy Group’s history runs deep, and a Web site dedicated to celebrating Black History Month showcases current and former student-athletes and coaches who have contributed richly to that history.

Initially launched as a printed publication in 1998, the Ivy’s Black History Month Celebration was the brainchild of Executive Director Jeff Orleans and Chuck Yrigoyen.  Four years later, the project featuring more than 70 profiles — primarily of African-American coaches and student-athletes who have connections to one of the Ivy’s eight member schools — evolved into its current online format. In addition to in-depth profiles, the Web site also features a timeline highlighting 150 milestones in Ivy athletics from the pre-1900s through the present.

Each February a new set of profiles is unveiled. Among this year’s honorees is NCAA 2006 Inspiration Award winner John Doar, a white Princeton grad who left private law to become to a leading figure at the Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department in the 1960s, and Earl Martin Phalen of Yale and Harvard, who was abandoned at birth but has gone on to establish a nonprofit tutoring and mentoring program that currently serves about 10,000 youths.

This year’s edition also chronicles the accomplishments of Norries Wilson, who as head football coach at Columbia is one of five African-Americans in charge of NCAA Division I programs. Others featured are Ben Johnson, known as the Columbia Comet, who was a contemporary of track

great Jesse Owens; former Dartmouth rower David Dawley, who as a white man joined a black gang in Chicago in an effort to convince members to create a positive legacy; and current Columbia women’s volleyball coach Deitre Collins, a former Broderick Cup winner at Hawaii who currently is one of a handful of African-American head volleyball coaches.

Among the most popular profiles in the archives are those highlighting  Pennsylvania’s John Baxter Taylor, who in 1908 became the first African-American to earn an Olympic gold medal; Theodora Roosevelt Boyd, a standout student-athlete at Radcliffe in the 1920s who went on to become a renowned educator; and Fritz Pollard of Brown, the first African-American to play in a Rose Bowl and an original player in the National Football League in the 1920s who later became the league’s first black head coach.

Ivy Associate Director Brett Hoover, who along with league public information assistants is responsible for most of the research and writing, describes the effort as a labor of love. It is also a project that has attracted a lot of love. The Web site has garnered multiple College Sports Information Directors of America writing awards and has been recognized by Congressmen, educational agencies and newspapers.

“For me, personally, and for our communications staff, we kind of take this as our favorite project of the year. We get to go and dig around and tell stories that people didn’t know,” said Hoover. 

He said material for potential stories comes from any number of sources — family members of former Ivy student-athletes, historians, league members, television documentaries, newspaper articles or word of mouth.

“I am constantly surprised at the depth of the subject matter,” said Hoover. He noted that initially, the goal was to represent each of the eight schools annually, but he found that to do the best job of researching and writing features, producing five to six a year was optimal. Over a two-year span, he said, each school will have at least one profile added.

To Hoover’s knowledge, the Ivy is the only conference recognizing Black History Month this way, but he hopes others will follow.

“It’s neat stuff and you never know,” he said. “You could tell the one tale about somebody that a kid reads and finds inspirational and that makes a difference to him.”

Hoover said league officials are even considering turning the project into a book someday.

“What touches me most about this is that even though we have a wonderful history of people who have gone on to achieve, the subjects in a lot of our stories really struggled to reach that level of achievement,” said Hoover. “They went on to become state supreme court justices or were inducted into the science hall of fame. They’ve won Olympic medals. But there was still an underlying struggle. They were not treated equally and to achieve the way they did is something that always sticks with me.”

To visit the league’s Black History Month Celebration project, go to www.ivyblackhistory.com.