Twenty-five Under 25 (cont.)Posted: Friday August 4, 2006 11:45AM; Updated: Friday August 4, 2006 1:30PM        Sarah Hughes
AGE: 21 The biggest name at the 2002 Winter Olympics wasn't Michelle Kwan, or fellow American Sasha Cohen. It was then-16-year-old Sarah Hughes, who won the gold medal on a tiebreaker in figure skating. Since then, Hughes has earned admission to Yale University, a choice reportedly influenced by the school's proximity to her trainers in New York. After taking the 2004-05 academic year off to skate professionally with the "Stars on Ice" tour company, Hughes is now in a state most college students only dream of. No, not Connecticut -- retirement (at least from the Olympic side of things). Chris Snow AGE: 24 Before turning 25, Chris Snow has gone from covering the Red Sox for The Boston Globe to so impressing the Minnesota Wild brass that they lured him away to be their director of hockey operations. The sportswriter turned exec had covered the Wild for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in '03-04, clearly leaving his mark on president and general manager Doug Risebrough. He even covered a Twins game in Minnesota for the Globe shortly after his hiring by the Wild. Hey, Dan Shaughnessy -- jealous? Jessica Smith AGE: 18 You might know her best as that guy Jason's rebuffed girlfriend on the guiltily addictive Laguna Beach, but Jessica Smith hasn't done so bad for herself since then. One of the less ridiculous characters (sorry -- "people") on the show, she was hired by St. Martin's Press to be the spokeswoman for Let's Go travel guides. She got to tour Europe and maintained a blog while traveling everywhere from Berlin to Amsterdam to Paris to London. Victor Hu AGE: 22 Victor Hu, like most baseball fans, is pretty familiar with statistics. However, he's not your run-of-the-mill number-cruncher. While most people were poring over fantasy baseball trades last summer, the Harvard applied math and psychology major sent his impressive résumé to George Steinbrenner's staff, and ended up with a job in Tampa. Reportedly, Hu made waves: His research supported a midseason trade for Rockies hurler Shawn Chacon, who of course ended up being a major cog in the Yankees' rotation as they marched toward the playoffs. Joe Sabia and Sherwood Tondorf AGE: 22 and 22 Though Joe Sabia and Sherwood Tondorf have departed from Chestnut Hill, their creation lives on. That creation, of course, would be The BC: a spoof of FOX's unsettlingly popular television show The O.C. that is set at Boston College and stars BC celebrities. The show has featured guest appearances by alum Tim Russert, the BC men's basketball team and Doug Flutie -- who launched "Hail Mary passes to defeat villains," Sabia told SIOC. The BC is earning Sabia and Tondorf plenty of notice. Profiled by The New York Times and with hundreds of thousands of hits on their website, they got to visit the set of The O.C. with Bob DeLaurentis, executive producer of the show and father of a BC alum. Graham Bensinger AGE: 19 In a way, you can blame Graham Bensinger for Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens' brutal divorce. Bensinger, a precocious 19-year-old broadcast journalism major, interviewed Owens for ESPN last November (he also has his own show on ESPN Radio). In a mostly innocuous conversation, Owens divulged a remarkable amount: how much he disliked the Eagles and Andy Reid's coaching. He also claimed that they'd be better off with a quarterback like Brett Favre instead of McNabb. As you know, the rest is history. But Bensinger has more than just Owens on his résumé: He's interviewed everyone from O.J. Simpson and Pete Rose to Barry Bonds and Muhammad Ali. Not bad for an extracurricular activity.
Wes BergmannAGE: 20SCHOOL: Arizona State University CLAIM TO FAME: MTV reality show king Isn't it ironic how a cast member of a reality show entitled The Real World can stave off entering, well, the real world? In the age of MTV spinoffs and reunion "challenge" shows, towheaded Wes Bergmann has emerged as MTV's villain extraordinaire, a modern-day Puck. Coming out of Arizona State University, Bergmann has come a long way since the Austin season, when he had "never really experienced living with an African-American" and claimed he couldn't wait to start his own business. In the current season of Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Fresh Meat, Wes has already played a part in the elimination of his girlfriend Johanna, best friend Danny and Danny's girlfriend, Melinda. At this rate, he may never get around to leaving the bubble of reality television to fulfill his former aspirations. Then again, who said that's a bad thing? Cole Wiley AGE: 24 Since the sudden death of his father, the esteemed sportswriter Ralph Wiley on June 13, 2004, Cole Wiley has assumed major responsibilities for Heygood Images Productions Inc., the multimedia consulting firm in Washington, D.C., that his father started. The company has worked with such names as Arthur Ashe, Spike Lee and Johnnie Cochran. But the younger Wiley is also carving a name out for himself at Harvard Law School. And he's certainly not shy about refuting misconceptions about him and his father, a prominent figure in the African-American sports landscape. On his personal blog, in fact, he has taken ESPN.com columnist Scoop Jackson to task for claiming that he (Jackson) is "carrying on Ralph Wiley's legacy."    |  | |||||||||||||
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