It was the heart and sole that delivered a victory over the Wolverines in a worn and dirty shoe.It wasn’t about perseverance and it didn’t occur in the Horseshoe. Instead, a collection of 200 used tennis shoes vaulted Ohio State to victory in a contest with the University of Michigan.Michigan collected half as many shoes – about 90 – in the Reuse-A-Shoe contest. People from both schools donated old tennis shoes, regardless of how rundown they were. Nike collected them and will turn the materials into athletic surfaces and Nike products, said Jian Allen, Nike student representative for OSU.”The program started just over five years ago,” Allen said. “Several Nike employees that were working in defective product handling department were not fond of the idea of discarding shoes that had one small defect and lots of good usable material.”This is the first year that the program has been done at OSU. The Nike representatives of Michigan and OSU wanted to take advantage of the school rivalry by creating another competition between them, Allen said.”For Nike to create the average sized playground surface (approximately 1,500 square feet) materials from 2,000 pairs of shoes are needed,” Allen said.Two of these recycled surfaces have already been installed in Ohio; one in the Cleveland area at the North Central YWCAM and the other in Cincinnati at the Seven Hills Neighborhood House. Both surfaces are indoor basketball courts.Dawn Lynne Dengler, environmental services team manager for the Cleveland YWCA, said everyone is really excited about the floor that was finished in October 1997.”We made the new surface the focal point of our renovation project,” Dengler said.William Brown, executive director for the Seven Hills Neighborhood House, was approached by Nike in the fall of 1996. Nike was interested in replacing a floor in the Cincinnati area to be ready for the Women’s Final Four NCAA tournament.In January 1997, Seven Hills was selected because of the condition of the floor and the nature of its work. It is a social service agency in Cincinnati, serving the needs of 10,000 individuals each year.”Seven Hills was granted $55,000 for the new surface. Nike put us in touch with the company they work with,” Brown said.Nike requested that their P.L.A.Y. (Participate in the Lives of America’s Youth) logo and signature swoosh be incorporated into the finished surface. Seven Hills was happy to comply. Their logo was also included on the court’s surface. The shoes that were collected will be sorted by Allen, a senior majoring in marketing, and then shipped to Nike headquarters in Portland, Ore. Nike will then disassemble and sort the parts.The outer soles will be the most likely part used for athletic surfaces. Other surfaces that can be created by the old shoes are running tracks, tennis courts, climbing wall decking and equestrian riding surfaces.