Issue link: http://www.wacmagazine.com/i/450770
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2015 | Washington Athletic Club Magazine | 37 C LUB MEMBERS and Club-sponsored athletes have continued to compete at national and international levels in the eight decades since Helene captured the world's attention. It started just four years later when swimmers Jack Medica, Olive McKean, and Mary Lou Petty competed at the Berlin Games. Jack brought home a gold and two silvers, and Olive claimed a bronze. It was the same year Jesse Owens won four gold in the face of Adolf Hitler. Also in 1936, WAC board members Torchy Torrance and Royal Brougham, the legendary Seattle sports writer and editor, helped raise funds for the University of Washington eight- oar crew team that also won Olympic gold, a story given new life by the recent literary success The Boys in the Boat. We'll be looking back on WAC history throughout 2015. In the April/May issue of WAC Magazine, uncover the critical role women and families played in helping save the Club from the Great Depression and a rocky financial start. CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY "We continue to seek Olympic hopefuls, to help them train, and hopefully to watch them reach the Games and the Olympic podium." Twenty years after that feat, the WAC sent four rowers to the 1956 U.S. Olympic trials in New York, and WAC swimmer Nancy Ramey took silver at the Melbourne Games. Other WAC- supported Olympians include the brother-sister figure skating pair Karol and Peter Kennedy, who won the U.S. championship from 1948–1952 and took silver at the 1952 Olympics; and cross-country runner Doris Brown, who won five consecutive international titles from 1967–1971 and represented the U.S. in the 1968 and 1972 Games. "The Olympics remain the pinnacle of international sports," Wayne says. "We continue to seek Olympic hopefuls, to help them train, and hopefully to watch them reach the Games and the Olympic podium." By 1955, the Club had helped support competitive athletes in crew, golf, squash, swimming, handball, skiing, ice skating, wrestling, and boxing. Today, WAC athletes eyeing the 2016 Olympics include rugby players and rowers. International achievement