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Jessica Scott is getting used to seeing world-class athletes.

On her first day as an intern at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, she sat near speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, but it was no big deal.

"Everyone's basically the same here," Scott said. "It's not like KU, where everybody sees a basketball player and they stop to stare."

By "basically the same," she means athletes who are the best in the United States, and possibly the best in the world.

Scott, a 2004 Kansas University graduate from Haven, just south of Hutchinson, will spend the next six months interviewing those athletes as one of two interns for the U.S. Olympic Committee's Media and Public Relations Division. She's been on the job a week, and already has met Steven Lopez, who won the gold medal in tae kwon do in 2000, and watched the women's gymnastics team work out.

The stories she writes will be posted in the "Week in Review" section of the Team USA Web site and will be featured in the Olympic Beat magazine and other publications.

"We just want to get publicity for athletes, basically, and keep the media informed about what they're doing -- and hopefully get them interested in an athlete and do a story about them," said Scott, 22.

The internship was a perfect fit for Scott, who always has been a sports fan, especially of college and professional basketball. She was a sports intern at WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Mo., and covered men's basketball for the University Daily Kansan during the 2002-2003 school year. She also worked for KUJH-TV while at KU.

She said things were bustling at the Olympic Training Center, which has 500 staff members to support 567 athletes, both training for the Summer and Winter Olympics.

"It's very hectic right now," Scott said. "Almost everyone in our department is getting ready to go to Greece (where the Summer Olympics begin Aug. 13 in Athens). It's basically going to be me and the other intern left here. We have to stay here and hold down the fort."

Scott said her office hadn't dealt much with the doping scandal that has tainted the U.S. track and field team.

"Honestly, no one really discusses it much," she said. "We read all the newspapers and stuff and casually talk about that, but it's not really a big issue for us."

Scott is staying in a dormitory on the training facility campus, and gets to work out at the facilities at the center. She also is eating most of her meals at the cafeteria, which is full of healthy food options.

"That's what I worried about -- it being like freshman year at the Oliver Hall lunchroom," she said. "But everything here is super-healthy, and they tell you what you should eat."

Scott said she was eager for the Olympic competition to start and to see some of her new friends on TV.

"It's going to be a lot more interesting because I know people who will be competing," she said. "It'll be a lot more entertaining to watch."