News Release
April 2002
(Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania) - For the next couple of years, Emily Shertzer '02 (Hummelstown,
PA) will be living in the dusty environs of Fort Sam Houston, outside
San Antonio, Texas, building up to a chance at an Olympic gold medal.
She's been invited to train with other athletes who hope to make the
U.S. team for the pentathlon event of the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.
Formerly called the military pentathlon, this competition
requires contenders to be proficient target shooters, fencers, swimmers,
horseback riders, and runners. In some events, such as the 200-meter
freestyle swim, the athletes compete against the clock; in others, such
as the fencing bouts and the 3,000-meter run, against each other.
Those invited to train already have demonstrated prowess
in four of the five categories, "which is where I'm at," Shertzer
said. The Hershey native is a prize-winning rider and an all-American
runner; and she has qualified for the air pistol and swimming events.
Now she must learn the art of the epée.
Shertzer came to the notice of U.S. Olympic officials
when, as a high school rider, she competed in a tetrathlon organized
by the Pony Club, an international association for riders between the
ages of 6 and 21. When the U.S. tetrathlon team went to the British
Isles in 1996, Shertzer came in ninth overall and was the top American
finisher.
For the pentathlon, her partner is Sting, a 14-year-old
Appaloosa that she's ridden since eighth grade. In the spring semester
of her first three years at Moravian, Sting came to college with her
and boarded at a local stable. But with Shertzer's busy schedule of
senior activities, Sting has stayed home in Hershey this year.
Shertzer is a biology major and a music minor. An oboist,
she played several solos at the 2001 Christmas Vespers and is in the
orchestra for the Moravian College Choir concert this weekend. She expects
to be in San Antonio through the summer of 2003, when selection trials
for the 2004 games are held. The pentathlon team consists of two women
and two men, and seven women are competing for the two slots.
Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective
liberal arts college located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its
founding to 1742, it is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college.
Visit the website at www.moravian.edu.
