Olympics

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 1948, 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