{"id":1603,"date":"2026-02-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/?p=1603"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:42:13","slug":"athlete-olympic-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/2026\/02\/04\/athlete-olympic-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"From Marshall Hoops to Olympic Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"
On the cusp of the 2026 Winter Olympics, while new athletes prepare to chase their dreams, one Marshall legend will be watching with pride and perspective. Lea Ann Parsley-Davenport, the university\u2019s only U.S. Olympic medalist, remains a link between the Thundering Herd<\/a> and the Olympic stage.<\/p>\n

Lea Ann was a standout basketball player and track and field athlete at Marshall University<\/a> in the late 1980s, but her path to the Olympics took shape well after graduation. She was born in Logan, West Virginia, and grew up in Granville, Ohio. Lea Ann earned her degree in health education from Marshall in the spring of 1990, a time when professional opportunities for women in sports were limited.<\/p>\n

\"Lea
Lea Ann Parsley-Davenport, Marshall Women\u2019s Basketball 1989<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Determined to stay active and competitive following graduation, she continued her education at the University of Virginia and began her career as a firefighter. In fact, she was named the state of Ohio\u2019s Firefighter of the Year in 1999 for her work saving lives, particularly a mother and daughter in a residential fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you look at firefighting, it\u2019s very much like being an athlete,\u201d Lea Ann said. \u201cYou know, the physical nature of the job requires you to pretty much be an athlete. So, I was staying in competitive shape just because of my job. So, when I discovered skeleton sort of by accident, I was ready to transition into that, even though I hadn\u2019t been in competitive sport for a while, just simply because of my job as a firefighter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll that I learned at Marshall then laid the foundation for stepping into the next phase, which was competing at an international level. I was able to take all of that that I had learned and built on as a Marshall student athlete and continue that at the next level. <\/span>\n\n\t\t\t- Lea Ann Parsley-Davenport<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

Lea Ann found skeleton, as she says, by chance while playing another sport called Team Handball, a fast-paced sport played between two teams where a score is made by throwing a ball into the opponent\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I started with some club teams that were in the East Coast area and tried out for the Pan American team after playing for a while,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I injured my thumb pretty badly and could not make the team. They asked me to stay on and go to the Pan American games as one of the team managers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, that role introduced her to a new sport.<\/p>\n

As manager for Team Handball, Lea Ann, then in her mid-20s, was responsible for fundraising for women\u2019s sports, including skeleton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just started exploring and learning and making phone calls and ended up talking with someone in Lake Placid, New York, at the Olympic Training Center,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd they said, \u2018Well, you know, you\u2019re a little bit too old at this point. We were really looking to recruit younger athletes, high school and early college. But if you want to come out and look at the training center, we\u2019ll show you around. And so that\u2019s what I did. I hopped in my car and drove out to Lake Placid and just met some really wonderful people in the sport of skeleton.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI really found a good collegiate home those four years at Marshall. I think that degree I got from Marshall really set me on the path of the health care career that I ended up having.<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t- Lea Ann Parsley-Davenport<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

That visit changed everything. Lea Ann quickly connected with athletes and coaches across North America.<\/p>\n

In 1998, some eight years after graduating from Marshall, Lea Ann earned a spot on the U.S. National Skeleton Team and spent six years competing on the international World Cup circuit. In 2000, she finished second in Lillehammer, Norway, earning the United States its first medal in women\u2019s World Cup skeleton competition. Two years later, she won a silver medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and went on to claim the U.S. national championship in 2004.<\/p>\n

\"Lea
Lea Ann Parsley-Davenport on the skeleton track.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unfortunately, her competitive career was cut short when a runaway bobsled crashed into her and teammates while they were training for the 2006 Olympics. She couldn\u2019t compete in the trials but stayed with the team as an assistant coach.<\/p>\n

Following her Olympic career, both Lea Ann and her husband, a Canadian athlete, spent time on the administrative side of the sport. They split their time between homes in Ohio and Canada. Both are avid sports enthusiasts and ready for the Winter Olympics in Italy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re excited to see the games coming up,\u201d Lea Ann said. \u201cThe track looks really great. The reports have been good, that it\u2019s in good shape and ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lea
Lea Ann Parsley\u2013Davenport and her family celebrated her Olympic performance in Salt Lake City.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since her time at Marshall, the Olympian earned a second undergraduate degree in nursing and then went on to complete a doctoral degree in community nursing. She says her time with the Thundering Herd put her on track for a great career both on and off the course.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dorm room was then in Towers, and our floor had quite a lot of athletes, female athletes. We had some girls that were on the volleyball team, track and field athletes, and so it was a nice mix of people, and I just really enjoyed the atmosphere,\u201d Lea Ann said. \u201cThe feel was very intimate at Marshall. You know, you could walk all over campus, ride your bike, and it was just the right size. I always felt like I was kind of like Cinderella in the slipper. Everything just fit, you know, whether it was the classroom environment, the sports, the teams. It was a good fit.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the cusp of the 2026 Winter Olympics, while new athletes prepare to chase their dreams, one Marshall legend will be watching with pride and perspective. Lea Ann Parsley-Davenport, the university\u2019s only U.S. Olympic medalist, remains a link between the Thundering Herd and the Olympic stage. Lea Ann was a standout basketball player and track […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1630,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/1630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}