To champion the development and achievement of the Oregon Swimming community.
 
 
P.O. Box 449
West Linn, OR 97068
503-747-3702

Hall of Fame

     
Inaugral Class Induction
November 2019

 

Joyce Macrae
 
1940 USA Olympic Team
Multnomah Athletic Club

 

Joyce was a member of "Cody's Kids" along with Nancy Merki, Brenda Helser, Suzanne Zimmerman, Geneva Klaus, and Mary Anne Hansen. This group of ladies dominated U.S. girls amateur swimming, winning three national Amateur Athletic Union swimming titles (in 1943, 1944, and 1949), 42 individual championships, and 16 relay championships, setting numerous records along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brenda Helser
 
1940 USA Olympic Team
Multnomah Athletic Club
 
Helser won a gold medal in the women's 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. A graduate of Stanford University, Helser grew up in Oregon where she graduated from Lincoln High School. Her swim coach was International Swimming Hall of Fame member Jack Cody. 
 

 

Nancy Merki
 
1948 USA Olympic Team
Multnomah Athletic Club
 

Merki grew up in Portland, Oregon. At a young age, she contracted poliomyelitis. With discovery of the polio vaccine years away, she took up swimming as exercise to reduce the effects of the disease at the age of 8. Trained by long-time swim coach Jack Cody, Merki excelled at the sport, and at the age of 13 entered the swimming scene at the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) national championships in 1939, setting American records in the 200, 400, and 800-freestyle events. Merki, who along with Multnomah Athletic Club teammates Brenda Helser, Suzanne Zimmerman, Geneva Klaus, Joyce Macrae, and Mary Anne Hansen, were known as "Cody's Kids" after their coach, figured to be a force at the 1940 Summer Olympics until the games were canceled by the events of World War II.

Merki continued to compete in AAU meets through the 1940s, setting numerous records, including shattering the 1,500-meter freestyle record by 17 seconds at the 1941 AAU championships. Merki and her MAC teammates won three national championships from 1939 to 1949, and Merki herself set 19 individual records. In 1941, at the age of 15, she finished sixth in balloting for the James E. Sullivan Award, presented to the nation's top amateur athlete.
 

 

Suzanne Zimmerman
 
1948 USA Olympic Team
Multnomah Athletic Club

At the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, Zimmerman won a silver medal in the 100-meter backstroke.

Zimmerman was born in Portland, Oregon. Growing up in Oregon, her swim coach was International Swimming Hall of Fame member Jack Cody. Along with fellow 1948 Olympians Brenda Helser and Nancy Merki, Zimmerman was part of the Multnomah Athletic Club team dubbed "Cody's Kids" that from 1939 to 1948, which won 58 individual national swimming titles and three national team swimming championships.
 
 
 
 

 

Jack Cody
 
Multnomah Athletic Club
Coach of both Olympic medal winning divers and swimmers at the Multnomah Club in Portland, Oregon from 1920-1948; His swimmers and divers won 3 National Team Titles, 42 individual championships, and 16 relay championships.
 
Cody's career at the Multnomah Club in Portland, Oregon, began and ended with champions. Cody's divers and swimmers helped make Multnomah world famous as an athletic club.  Cody's greatest fame developed in the 10 years from 1939 through 1949 when a speedy troupe of girls wearing the winged "M" became known as the "Cody Kids". Beginning with national AAU Senior Championships in 1939, when Nancy Merki, then 13 years of age, won her first of three high-point titles, the Cody Kids were in the nation's sports headlines for 10 years.  Nancy, Brenda Helser, Suzanne Zimmerman, Joyce Macrae and Mary Anne Hansen were the nucleus of a team that won national team titles three times, 42 individual championships, and 16 relay championship, many of these setting American records.  This was an era before the increase in national championship events, before age-group and Junior Olympic programs.
 
 

 
Maureen Murphy
 
1956 USA Olympic Team
Multnomah Athletic Club

 

 

 

 

Represented the United States at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Murphy competed in the women's 100-meter backstroke and finished fifth overall in the event final with a time of 1:14.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carolyn Wood
 
1960 USA Olympic Team
Multnomah Athletic Club
 
Wood was born in Portland, Oregon, and swam for the Multnomah Athletic Club and for Beaverton High School, where she won seven individual state championships in butterfly, freestyle and the individual medley.
 
At the 1960 U.S. Olympic Trials, Wood finished first in the 100-meter butterfly event and was favored to win the gold medal in the event at the Olympics. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, however, during the women's 100-meter butterfly finals, she accidentally swallowed water during the turn and did not finish the race. She did win a gold medal as a member of the winning U.S. team in the women's 4×100-meter freestyle relay, together with teammates Joan Spillane, Shirley Stobs and Chris von Saltza. She swam the crucial third leg of the relay, during which she caught up to and passed Australian swimmer Lorraine Crapp and gave a two-foot lead to anchor swimmer von Saltza, who finished the relay in first place to give the Americans the gold medal. The U.S. relay team set a new world record of 4:08.9 in the event final—nine seconds faster than the previous record. Wood also swam for the gold medal-winning U.S. team in the 4×100-meter medley relay, but under the international swimming rules in effect in 1960, she did not receive a medal because she did not swim in the event final. Individually, she competed in the 100-meter freestyle, and finished fourth in the event final with a time of 1:03.4. Wood, at 14 years old, was the youngest member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic team to win a medal.

 

Walt Schlueter
 
Multnomah Athletic Club

U.S. Olympic and Pan American coach.  He produced swimmers on every Olympic team from 1948 through 1972; His swimmers have established 15 World Records, 51 American and Sr. National Records, 35 National AAU Championships.  His teams won two U.S. AAU National Team Championships with Chicago Town Club in 1950 and the Multnomah Athletic Club in 1961.

Walt Schlueter was an innovator, a perfectionist, an eminently successful coach.  He is particularly noted for developing the perfect stroke of Don Schollander and Marilyn Ramenofsky.  He was originator of the rhythm method of teaching pace and the race pace/short rest/ broken swim method of training.  Elected as U.S. Olympic and Pan American diving coach, he was also Pan American swim coach as well as U.S. coach at several international swimming competitions.  He is best known as a coach of coaches, a stroke specialist originating dozens of stroke drills.  His swimmers have competed for the US. in 36 international competitions.
 
 
Don Schollander
 
1964/1968 USA
Olympic Team
Lake Oswego Swim Club
Multnomah Athletic Club

 

Schollander won a total of five gold medals and one silver medal at the 1964 and 1968 Summer Olympics. With four gold medals, he was the most successful athlete at the 1964 Olympics.

 
He joined Lake Oswego High School's swim team, and in 1960, helped lead the team to an Oregon state swimming championship as a freshman.
 
He was the captain of Yale's swim team, winning three individual NCAA championships. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Schollander won another gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, but finishing second in the 200-meter freestyle, the event that Schollander had considered to be his best. This was the first Olympics in which 200-meter swimming events were part of the competition.
 

 

Cathy Jamison
 
1968 USA Olympic Team
Multnomah Athletic Club

Jamison went to Wilson High school in Portland and then swam for the University of Santa Clara for 4 years.  She represented the USA on the World Student Games team in Tokyo in 1967 as well as the Pan American team in Winnipeg in 1967. She later represented the United States as an 18-year-old at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. She competed in the women's 200-meter breaststroke and finished fifth overall in the event final with a time of 2:48.4.

 

 

Kim Peyton
 
1972/1976 USA
Olympic Team
David Douglas Swim Club
 
Peyton swam for the David Douglas High School Swim Club in Portland, Oregon, where she set three national swimming records when she was only 9 and 10 years old. Her 17-18 400-m freestyle record of 4:20.35 stood from 1974 until 1997.
 
Peyton represented the United States at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich as a backup swimmer. In the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, she won a gold medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay with teammates Jill Sterkel, Shirley Babashoff, and Wendy Boglioli, setting a new world record with a time of 3:44.82. 
 
 
Brent Lang
 
1988 USA Olympic Team
Tualatin Hills Swim Club

 

 

Lang grew up in Beaverton, Oregon and swam at Tualatin Hills Swim Club.  He attended the University of Michigan where he was the team captain and won four NCAA individual titles (two in the 50 Free and two in the 100 Free).  Lang won an Olympic gold medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, by swimming for the winning U.S. team in the preliminary heats of the men's 4×100-meter freestyle relay.  Lang also swam for Team USA at the 1987 World University Games, 1989 Pan Pacific Games, and the 1991 World Swimming Championships. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chris Thompson
 
2000 USA Olympic Team
Roseburg Swim Team

Thompson grew up in Roseburg, OR. Chris won the bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in the men's 1,500-meter freestyle. He was the second American swimmer to break the 15-minute mark in the 1,500-meter freestyle, and held the American record for four years.  He held the NCAA and American records in the 1,650-yard freestyle for eleven years.