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 the conference championship because she had graduated two weeks before the meet, denying her the chance at a fourth straight individual and team title.
All of these quirks and challenges, unheard of at colleges like Alabama and Notre Dame and Stanford, are common at one of the country’s most unlikely athletic departments: the one at the Culinary Institute of America, one of the country’s most prestigious cooking schools.