Suzie McConnell -- a member of the gold medal-winning women's basketball team in last summer's Olympics -- is far from the first athlete affiliated with the University to participate in the Games. She's number 73.

Eighty-four years before McConnell's trip to Seoul, the late Nathaniel Cartmell won a gold medal in the mile relay and a bronze in the 200-meters. He stands as the first in a string of Penn Staters who have competed in the Games' 93-year history.

Penn State has been represented in every Olympic Games since the Summer Games when Cartmell competed, said John Lucas, professor of exercise and sport science and an Olympic historian.

Cartmell, track and field coach from 1923 to 1933, was the first University coach to gain identity as a national track and field powerhouse, Lucas said.

"There were 59 men and women athletes affiliated with Penn State (who competed) when I wrote the book," said Lucas, who authored 1904-1976 Penn State at the Olympics in 1979. "There are 73 now -- we're very proud of them."

While Cartmell became an Olympian before he came to the University to coach, others have gone the reverse route, Lucas said.

Marshall Avener -- a two-time Olympian and 1973 University alumnus -- returned to his alma mater to coach women's gymnastics.

Charlene F. Morett, the University's field hockey coach, won a bronze medal for field hockey in the 1984 Los Angeles games and was a member of the ill-fated 1980 U.S. Olympic Team. In 1980, President Carter boycotted the Summer Games in Moscow.

"Sports represent the purest thing we have to world peace," said Morett, a 1980 University alumna. "By boycotting, (the government) was destroying an avenue to world peace."

"To represent my country in the Olympics was the most thrilling experience of my life," she added.

Nations boycotting the Olympics have since discovered it is counterproductive to stay away from the games, Lucas said.

"After all these years, the countries have finally figured out that the only group that gets hurt are the athletes," he said. "I doubt that there will be another boycott in this century."

Lucas said he is uncertain about which - if any - University athletes will make the 1992 Games.

"I can only guess who might make the team," he said.

Lucas said he hopes University swimmer Kristen Elias will continue to train and possibly compete in the 1992 trials.

Several months before the Olympic Games, the American Olympic Committee holds trials, Lucas said. They choose the top three athletes from each sport to represent the United States at the Olympics.

Elias won a silver medal in the Pan-American Games last year. She tried out for the Olympic team and made the first cut, but did not make the final cut when the top three swimmers were chosen.

"It was all I thought about for two years," Elias said. "It's disappointing when you don't get your life's dream, but you can't dwell on it. You have to move on."

"I'm probably not going to try out again," she said. "That would mean three more years of training, and I would like to get a job and start my life."

McConnell, a former member of the women's basketball team at the University as well as an Olympian, also holds 22 University records and is the National Collegiate Athletic Association's all-time assist leader.

"Getting the gold medal -- having it put around my neck -- that was probably the proudest moment that I've ever experienced," she said in an Oct. 24, 1988 interview with The Daily Collegian.