HYDE PARK, N.Y. — The basketball team’s starting center missed the home opener because he had to work at Bocuse, the on-campus French restaurant. A 19-year-old woman was a frequent starter at striker for the men’s soccer team. And two years ago, the star of the women’s cross-country team missed out on a fourth straight conference championship because the school’s rolling enrollment schedule meant she graduated two weeks before her final meet.
All of these quirks and challenges, unheard-of at colleges like Alabama, Notre Dame and Stanford, are common at an unlikely athletic department: the one at the Culinary Institute of America, one of the country’s most prestigious cooking schools.