University of Mary Washington graduates played their own roles in the 2024 Paris Olympics through golf, swimming and guiding tourists.
“The Rings genuinely mean something to me, so for my life and career to intersect with this project, the experience has been very fulfilling,” said Tad Dickman. “After all the time and energy expended, to finally be here in Paris at the Olympics and see the hard work pay off, it has been special.”
Dickman is a 2012 UMW alumnus who earned a degree in business administration. He led communications for Olympic Golf.
In April 2022, Dickman pitched the idea to his PGA Tour bosses that he lead communications for the International Golf Federation, highlighted by golf’s inclusion in the Olympics. As senior director of communications, Dickman wanted to drum up some love for the game, which had been featured in the Olympics only three times in more than a century.
“Two years later, here I am writing from Paris,” Dickman, who is also head of communications and media for the International Golf Federation, said in an email to UMW. “This has been the most fun — and the most challenging — project I’ve ever worked on in my career.”
Dickman built his team from more than 30 professionals across the industry with a mission to set the sport of golf up for success this summer in France.
“I’ve definitely had a few ‘pinch-me’ moments … where you just have to pause and appreciate what’s happening,” he said. Like when American Scottie Scheffler brought home the gold.
Dickman grew up in Springfield, Virginia, and played basketball at UMW. He served as captain. An internship with Basketball Australia and the National Basketball League in Sydney the summer before graduation showed him what working in sports might be like.
“I came back motivated and focused on my [future] profession,” said Dickman. Before the Olympics, he held communications roles in soccer and football and worked for D.C. United, the New York Giants and the Jacksonville Jaguars.
He switched to golf in 2020, when he took the job with PGA TOUR. As chair of the Olympic Golf Communications & Content Committee, he built connections with Olympic Golf athletes and sports media.
The International Golf Federation hopes to add a mixed-team event – one man and one woman from top-qualifying countries – at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“As I sit and type all of this, I’m overcome with a little emotion,” Dickman said. “Working at the Olympic Golf competitions has been a full-circle experience.”
Evan Stiles, who earned a degree in geography in 1991, spent more than a decade training multiple gold medal-winner Torri Huske as head coach of the Arlington Aquatic Club. And 2024 UMW grad Hadley Mantia, who majored in French and international business, used her fluency – and all of her flair – to welcome spectators from across the globe to the Summer Games as a host for a major Olympics sponsor.
As a kid in Washington, D.C., Stiles’ neighborhood had a swimming pool. However, he did not know how to swim. He signed up for lessons when he was 6 years old and joined the swim team at 7. By 11, he was swimming year-round.
“I found success in it,” said Stiles. “You gravitate toward what you’re good at.”
Stiles, a swim coach for more than 30 years, has coached Huske for more than a decade. Huske took triple gold medals, as well as two silvers, at the Paris Olympics.
When Stiles came to UMW in the late 1980s, he brought his competitive side and set 11 team records in swimming alone, including one that still stands among UMW’s top 10. He also played tennis, water polo and baseball, pitching the school’s first-ever winning game.
“I enjoyed every minute I had at Mary Washington,” Stiles said.
He was headed toward a graduate degree in urban planning when then-Mary Washington swim coach Paul Richards mentioned a master’s program in coaching. The program would change the course of Stiles’ life. “I wanted to coach so I could impact other people’s lives the way he’d impacted mine.”
Soon after he finished the coaching program, he was hired by the Arlington Aquatic Club and became head coach in 2005, which is when he started training an 11-year-old Huske. “Teeny-tiny Torri dove in and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this girl’s pretty fast,” Stiles said.
He trained her alongside her male counterparts to crank up the challenge. And by the time the two set their sights on the Olympics, Huske was breaking world records and winning international titles. In the previous Summer Games in Tokyo, held in 2021 due to the worldwide pandemic, she and her teammates won silver in the 4×100-meter medley relay. But in the 100-meter butterfly, Huske missed a podium spot by one one-hundredth of one single second – an outcome she and Stiles define as “devastating.”
They shared their “redemption story” in 2024 with Huske taking the gold in that event and two others and winning two silver medals.
“It’s one thing to say you’ve coached someone to go to the Olympics; it’s a whole other thing to say they won gold,” Stiles said. “It makes you think, ‘I did a pretty good job with this kid.’”
If Hadley Mantia’s fascination with France led her to Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, no wonder it also landed her a job in hospitality with a top sponsor of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
“I kind of just applied [for the job] not knowing what I was getting into,” said Mantia, who came to UMW from Massachusetts. “A lot of times we’re the first face of the Olympics these people see. It’s about upholding the grand representation of what the games are.”
A bus host for Olympics sponsor Allianz, a German financial services company, she was guide for spectators arriving in Paris from all over the world. Her duties were a constant surprise. One day she might escort Polish stakeholders to take in some rugby; the next she could accompany a group from China to watch judo. “It can be challenging,” she said.
Hard work is nothing new for Mantia, who graduated from UMW in May with majors in international business and French after only three years. A resident assistant and technician at Dodd Auditorium, she joined the UMW Performing Arts Company and helped rejuvenate the French club. Last summer she interned in marketing in Aix-en-Provence, France.
Enchanted by conversations between her grandmother and her great aunt, both Francophones, she caught the bug early on. “When the two of them would speak French, I just thought it was the coolest thing on the planet,” said Mantia, who chose an Eiffel Tower backpack for school year after year.
So, when it came time for college, she was drawn to a unique opportunity at UMW – a business French course covering accounting and marketing, vocabulary and culture, all with a focus on France. “It’s little things that are so different but so important.”
Mock interviews practiced in class, Mantia said, helped her win her current role with the Olympics in Paris. She stayed with friend and former Mary Washington Visiting Language Coordinator Margaux Piasecki and had the time of her life in July 2024.
Watching Olympic fencing was the summer highlight, said Mantia, who hopes eventually to own an apartment in France.
“It’s because of Mary Washington,” she said, “that I somehow ended up on this path.”
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Rebecca Barnabi
