Athletics 2

Hurdles is an original Olympic competition from 1896.  Women’s Hurdles were added in 1932.

The Colosseum was built on campus against rain and mist and mold in 1902; because UP men’s track and field needed a place to practice and a site to host the Indoor Invitational; the women’s track and and cross-country teams arrive late, beginning with coach Mike Johnson in 1978; the indoor arena long gone.  Hurdles are part of collegiate life then and now, but more graceful on the track than in some of the other challenges and stumbles students overcome and survive on the Bluff.  Sports Photography is a graceful art as well.

Photo gallery from the University Archives, click on image to enlarge:

Nick Gayeski, Hurdles, 1936

Bill Finch, hurdles, 1930s

Bob Thalhofer, hurdles, 1949

Bob Thalhofer right, hurdles, ca1949

Bob Thalhofer, hurdles, 1948

Mike Boyle, Hurdles, 1966

Hurdles competition, Ed Maerz, Kent Soldan, Mike Lamb, ca1965

Women’s hurdles, 1995

Trampoline made its debut as an Olympic sport in the 2000 Olympics.

Without any other information from our usual sources, we simply offer this 1965 photo of women on a trampoline in Howard Hall.  Most likely one of the recreational offerings from the intramural department.

Golf is returning as an Olympic sport in the 2016 summer Olympics.  Golf was last played at the Olympics in 1900 and 1904.

In the early years of the University students and faculty were seen putting on the campus greens.  After 1935 golf became more organized and the men’s teams dabbled in matches against other northwest colleges such as Oregon, Willamette, Seattle College, and Linfield winning 80% of their matches through the ’40s and ’50s.  With the University’s 1976 entrance into the West Coast Athletic Conference (WCAC), golf became a varsity sport, with Women’s Golf added to the athletic roster in 1998.  The golf program for men and women was not renewed following the 2010-11 season.

Foot-Races are marquee Olympic events from ancient times and also in the modern (from 1896) revival.  Yet such a difference in training, equipment, and world-records just in recent years.   UP knows the foot-race well, and trains the best in UP Cross Country and Track & Field.   Our own include: Josh Ilustre, ’16 representing Guam in the men’s 800 for the 2016 Summer Olympic games.  Derek Mandell, ’08, who represented Guam in the men’s 800 twice, at both the 2012 and 2008 Summer Olympic games.

The first of the Holy Cross presidents at UP, Fr. Michael Quinlan, C.S.C., was a firm believer in physical fitness and competitive sports.  He insisted on sports as an element of the educational mission.  Hence the Columbia Colosseum, a quonset-type building with a 12-lap track and seating capacity for 1600 spectators.  That is, already by the fall of 1902 our campus was furnished with an indoor track, marking the beginning of a distinguished UP legacy of accomplishment in Track & Field.

One of the prized exhibits in the University Museum is a pair of track shoes worn by Eugene “Gene” Schmitt, 1915 graduate of Columbia University Preparatory School.  Old leather shoes, light-weight, unpadded, uncushioned, and wearing short sharp rusted metal spikes.

As a student-athlete, Schmitt excelled as a middle distance runner for Columbia in 1914 and 1915, competing mostly in the 220 and 440 yard races and the half-mile relay; and selected as team captain for 1915.   In the 1914 scouting report (Columbiad, June 1914), Schmitt is described as “… one of the finds of the year in the 220 and 440 events.  Possessing an abundance of endurance he runs like those never-tiring Spartan youths of old.  His specialty is the relay.”  [Spartans = Ancient Greeks!]

The 1915 season round-up (Columbiad, June 1915) gilds the lily a bit, painting disappointed frustration as high praise: “Gene was our star 440 yard dasher and he was never satisfied with lower than second place and only on one occasion was he bound to accept this latter position at the finish.”  Gene valued by the student sports’ reporter as an indefatigable competitor.  This respect and awe is perhaps best seen in this account of the last meet of the year, which was also Eugene Schmitt’s last track competition for Columbia.  The team captain took the first leg of a relay race.  During the relay Gene was “spiked badly and had to run the last two hundred yards with one shoe off and his heel terribly lacerated.  His remarkable grit saved the relay for his team.” (Columbiad, June 1915).   The shoes on display at the Museum show no discernible signs of blood, but Gene’s spirit continues with three grandchildren who competed for UP in soccer and tennis in the 1980s.   Indeed, the fourth generation walked the commencement stage again this past May, so that today Gene Schmitt’s legacy counts four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren who are proud Pilots and enthusiastic members of the University of Portland Alumni family.

Weightlifting is one of the original Olympic sports since the first Olympics in 1896.

Strength & Fitness programs at the Beauchamp Recreation and Wellness Center have an ancestor in the Body Building program organized in 1941 under the leadership of student-instructor, Philip Loprinzi.  Within a year more than 80 members were crushing it with the “modern apparatus” that somehow qualified Howard Hall as “one of the best-equipped bar-bell gyms on the coast”. (1942 Log)

Loprinzi’s graduation (Class of 1943) and military service left the club inactive until Loprinzi returned to the Bluff in 1947 as a member of the faculty and advisor for Body Building.  After the Howard Hall fire in 1949, buff club members devoted themselves to “repairing fire-damaged Howard Hall equipment and seeking exercises on the tennis court and in neighboring gyms.”  (1949 Log)   The Body Building club failed after 1949.   Today’s campus features recreation facilities in Howard Hall, Chiles Center, and in the Beauchamp Recreation Center.

Another of our early Olympians started as a student-athlete on the Bluff, excelling in football, basketball, and track.   As a member of Columbia’s track team, John Murphy was a star high jumper who broke school and meet records.

From the track season recap (Columbiad, June 1915), “Johnny did the aeronaut stunt in great shape for us this year.  The high-jump bar usually slipped up to an unsteady notch when this spry young Irishman was to take his trial at it.  It has been rumored that Prof. Callicrate (coach) has been dieting his high jumper on Indian rubber and bed-springs.”

Graduating from Columbia University Preparatory School in June 1917, Johnny Murphy represented the Multnomah Athletic Club in September 1919 at a senior national track and field championships of the Amateur Athletic Union.  In the high jump competition Murphy cleared the bar with a record-breaking 6 feet 3 3/16 inches – 3/16 of an inch over the previous record.

In 1920, at the age of 25, Johnny Murphy was a member of the U.S. Team at the Summer Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium.  Murphy finished 5th in the high jump competition with a jump of 1.850 metres (6 feet 1/16 inches).  Two members of the U.S. team finished ahead of him earning gold and silver medals.

High Jump is one of the ancient Olympic sports from 1896.  The women’s high jump was added to the Olympic games in 1928.

Archery has been part of the Olympic games since 1900.

The University of Portland’s flirtations with Archery on campus occur in the early 1960s: the above from the 1960 Log highlighting women archers on the Shipstad quad; accompanied by listings in the 1960-61 and 1961-62 Pilot Student Guides where archery is offered through the physical education curriculum as an intramural sport.  No injuries recorded, but still maintaining campus as a weapons-free zone since the 1960s.

Boxing is one of the original Olympic sports dating back to the first Olympics in 1896.

Boxing was not a varsity sport at Columbia University or University of Portland; just something students engaged in for fun at the annual Monogram Club Smoker.  On purpose.  The club (whose members who had earned a varsity letter playing intercollegiate sports) sponsored and performed in the Monogram Smoker, a popular on campus fund-raiser.  Howard Hall was often filled to capacity as spectators watched student boxers (and sometimes Portland-area talent) bob and weave to avoid jabs from opponents, jeers from the crowd.

Fencing is one of the original Olympic games from 1896.

Fencing as an extra-curricular activity at University of Portland dates back to 1940s when there was a fencing club using a non-regulation floor in Howard Hall (Beacon, February 13, 1940).

Fencing reappears in 1960 as an intercollegiate sport for men and women with teams competing against other colleges for the first time.   The UP fencing squad took third place in their first competition at the Northwest Invitational Foil Tournament.  In fall and winter 1961 tournaments, fencer Mary Alice Rudovsky took the first and second place individual awards.   Both Mary Alice and her teammate, John Lorenz, competed for UP in the Final Intercollegiate Championship Fencing Tournament in April 1962.

(Photos courtesy of the University Archives, click on image to enlarge)

Fencing in Howard Hall, ca1940s

Fencing, ca1950s

Fencing on lawn, 1960

Fencing, ca1950

The University boasts many alumni Olympic athletes who once trained and competed on the Bluff.   Proud Pilots instantly recall our recent University soccer stars returning as Olympic medalists in 2008, 2012 for the USA and Canada teams.  But the honorable title of First University Olympian reaches back to the very, very, very early years of the University when we had barely three buildings on campus and were still called Columbia University.  Student-athlete Daniel Kelly attended Columbia University for just one year, 1904-1905.  And Daniel Kelly excelled in track and field.

At a 1905 Columbia University indoor track and field meet held inside the Columbia Colosseum (a sports’ facility here on-campus, 1903-1929; replaced by Howard Hall, but back then spilling across Shipstad quad), Mr. Kelly set a new world record for long jump by shattering the previous world record of 21 feet, 10 inches with a jump of 22 feet, 1 1/4 inches.

Daniel Kelly went on to the University of Oregon from the Bluff.  In 1908 Kelly represented the United States at the Summer Olympic Games held that year London, winning a silver medal for Team USA in Long Jump, his best competition jump covering a distance of 7.09 metres (23 feet, 3 1/4 inches).

The Long Jump event is one of the original Olympic Track and Field sports (from 1896).  The Women’s Long Jump was added in 1948.