Sport and society are often linked, whether by a fan’s comparison between a game-winning goal and real-life heroics or a journalist’s association between performance-enhancing drugs and rampant dishonesty in American politics. Such comparisons are primed for aggrandizement: caught up in the moment, we often forget that the realm of sports does not always equal the realm of the real world. Based on its name alone, the traveling Baseball as America exhibit seems likely to fall under this category of distorted reality.

Praveen Pamidimukkala ’08, Doria M. Holbrook ’08, and Julia C. Zimmerman ’09 earned College Sports Information Directors Association/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America accolades in the competitive at-large division to give the Engineers eight national plaudits for the 2007–08 academic year. Pamidimukkala received the first honor in the history of the men’s volleyball program, while Holbrook collected her third straight award as a member of the women’s swimming and diving team. Zimmerman was also a repeat selection for the women’s gymnastics team.

MIT’s Theater on Ice team competed at the Thirteenth Annual International Theater on Ice competition, held at the Gordon H. Paquette Arena in Burlington, Vt. on June 28. The team placed fifth out of five teams in the Adult Choreographic Exercise category in its first season of existence.

A gift from the parents of an MIT student-athlete will change the landscape for outdoor competition in the Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation. Bob and Eveline Roberts, whose daughter, Julia N. Roberts ’10, is a midfielder on the women’s soccer team, have pledged $2 million for the installation of synthetic grass turf in Henry G. Steinbrenner ’27 Stadium.