| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
|
| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
|
|
|
|
Couple cooking up fun time as hosts for skater's family
By Jeff Oliver
Deseret News staff writer
It may not be a honeymoon suite, but Irene and Steve Stojko won't be complaining about their accommodations during their stay in Salt Lake City.
"They'll be staying in the mother-in-law apartment,'" says John Davison, who lives in Sandy with his wife, Mary Jean.
The Davisons volunteered to host the Stojkos, the parents of figure skater Elvis Stojko, one of Canada's best shots for a medal at the 2002 Winter Games.
The Stojkos are scheduled to arrive Friday.
The apartment is in the basement and comes equipped with a bathroom, refrigerator, two televisions, newly installed locks — and two hosts who "love to cook," says Mary Jean Davison.
"We've been going through breakfast menus," she says.
Leading the possible selections for the morning meal is a casserole-style blueberry french toast the Davisons tasted during a recent trip to North Carolina.
"The rest is the usual stuff," she says. In this case, that means eggs Benedict, cinnamon roles and huevos rancheros.
Breakfast is the only meal Samsung's Athlete Family Homestay Program requires volunteers to offer their guests.
For the Davisons, though, who rolled out the welcome mat by hanging a Canadian flag from the porch, the breakfast-only requirement is a limitation they look forward to ignoring.
"We can do more than that if we want to," she said.
And they will.
On the day Elvis Stojko is scheduled to compete, the Davisons plan to accompany their guests to the Salt Lake Ice Center to cheer for their new favorite figure skater.
The two have also been busy recruiting additional fans.
Rachael Bednick, 18, the Davisons' granddaughter from Richmond, Texas, will be attending the competition as well.
Bednick, who says she has been an Elvis Stojko fan since she saw him complete a quadruple jump, the decision to meet the skater's family, watch him compete and maybe even meet the skater was far from difficult.
"I told my grandparents I'd sleep in the garage if I had to," Bednick said.
Mary Jean Davison has been a figure skating aficionado for some time. She's also been doing her homework.
"He's an aggressive skater," she says.
The Davisons also serve as a "family team leader."
As such, the two were responsible for recruiting 14 other host families, a potentially difficult process that was made easy by their involvement in a local Presbyterian church.
John Davison says once word spread among the congregation and others in Utah, all he had to do was wait for the volunteers to call and offer their homes.
The task became a little trickier when the Salt Lake Organizing Committee failed to provide the list of incoming families by November as they had promised.
By the time the list arrived at the end of December, many of the families who expressed interest had "given up," John Davison said. This left the Davisons to play a stressful game, trying to match unassigned Olympic families with host families. The couple finished pairing families early last week.
"We've been spending a lot of energy putting out brush fires," John Davison said. Still, the Davison family describes the process as having "been so smooth."
E-MAIL: jeffo@desnews.com
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February 11, 2002
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