52 Photos Week 46: Athletic

Question

This week's 52 Photos theme:

ATHLETIC

To participate, simply:

1. reply below, and
2. add a photo that fits the theme to this week's free-space gallery.

If you use a social network (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) please share the photo there as well, using #52photos and #wikitree. This can be a great way to involve more family members. If you use a blog, include a link to your blog post in your answer below so we can all read it.

You don't need to participate every week to share a photo. But members who do participate every week can earn challenge badges. Click here for more info. If this is your first time participating and you don't have the participation badge, or if you pass a milestone (13 in 13, 26 in 26, 52 in 52) please post here.

For help with how to add photos, see here.

Answer 1

This is a photo taken in the early 1950s of my mother Clarice Marvin Lovelace. She was very athletic and played tennis, snow skied and was an excellent swimmer. 

 

Comments

Your mother is lovely, Alexis. Thank you for sharing her.

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Thank you Robin for your very nice comment. I was very lucky to have her for a mother.

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Wow Alexis your mother are gorgeous, what a really beautiful   Lady. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful photo

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Thank you Susan for your sweet comment. She was very sweet like you and kind to everyone.

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What a wonderful picture of your mother. Loved to had her figure

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Thank you Sherry for your very nice comment.

Answer 2

Back in the day, I was a soccer mom. My son never won a championship but he always had a good time. Once he filled his soccer shoes with flowers.

Answer 3

This a photo of my Grandfather, Myrle Raymer taken in 1961.  He had a softball coaching career that spanned 52 years in Sarnia, Stratford, Simcoe and Parry Sound, Ontario. He was inducted into the Sarnia Lambton Sports Hall of Fame in 1989. During his coaching years in Simcoe, Ontario he led his girls to 12 Provincial Championships. He also led the Men's team to a Tri County League title in 1975. He once advertised for junior girls to come to a park in Simcoe if they were interested in learning how to play the game. When he and a couple of his players arrived at the park, 72 girls aged 11-14 were waiting for them. Rather than disappoint them he managed to get volunteers together and they had enough players to organize a junior league of 5 teams.

Answer 4

My daughter, Brenda Marie Sims (1964-....), was an athlete at a young age.

One day in 1976, at the age of 12, she came home from school and asked if she could join a little league baseball team.  At that age she was a little bigger than most of the boys.

I checked into it.  I was told there had never been a girl play in the league in Austin, Texas.  I asked if there was rule against it.  They said they guessed not, but didn't seem real happy about it.

So, Brenda went to the try-outs.  One team reluctantly chose her in the last round of the draft..  

I recall sitting in the stands watching her play.  Others around didn't really know who I was.  Some would yell out "go home and play with your dolls"  and other such comments.

However, when Brenda excelled,  the moods changed some.  She actually became the teams best starting pitcher.  And those early critics actually began to cheer for her.

There was a newspaper article written about her at the end of the season.

Below is a photo of her in uniform.

Comments

no picture

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not sure why you can't view the photo ... it is there when I look at the answer

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It's there now, You must be proud of her!

Answer 5

My great uncle Herbert “Bubby” Brock (1909-1970) was the most athletic man in our family. He was a runner through high school and even set a record! When he got older, he love to go sailing. In fact, he died while doing what he loved doing best, sailing.

Missy 

Answer 6

My great-grandfather, Rollie Dunn, was an athlete at William and Vashti College in the 1910s.  This photo always makes me thankful that the high hurdles were constructed differently when we were running track. Rollie won medals in intercollegiate competition for hurdles and the 110m dash.

Answer 7

My grandfather, Arthur Deane Dawson, was an avid bicycle rider. He is pictured on the right with a fellow Century Road Club member in their racing uniforms. He entered many 100-mile long races, called "centuries." He was the chairman of the membership committee in the Century Road Club when he lived in Brooklyn. He kept riding his bicycle well into his 90s.

Answer 8

My grandfather, CN Caldwell, set a record for scoring 5 touchdowns in a game at the University of Louisville that has not been broken in over a century.  He is in the back row, on the right.

Comments

Well that did not work.  How do I add a picture from my desk top?

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I can see the whole picture if I right click on "View image" but that is not what I had in mind

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Your picture may be too big. Try this. (I cannot guarantee it will work--I am still trying to figure out this myself.) Try this. Click EDIT. Put your mouse on the picture. Click IMAGE DETAILS. On the right side of the dialogue box you will see some options. The first one is WIDTH. Try making this number smaller. Click SAVE. If you still aren't satisfied with your results, keep experimenting. Good luck.

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Great.  That worked very well, thank you. Life is good.

Answer 9

I shared two photos

Comments

Oh, dear. I can't see them. Where are they now? On a profile?

Answer 10

Some of the Reeves family in N.S.W. Australia

Answer 11

My grandmother was part of her high school's volleyball team in the early 70s. Here's a picture of her during her sophomore year in 1972.

Answer 12

This photo was taken in 2015 of our grandson, Jarrod (in green) where he won the 400m districts sprint and qualified for the Stawell Gift, in Noosa, Queensland.  He had also qualified in the 100m and 50m sprints. The Stawell Gift is Australia's oldest and richest short-distance running race.  It is the main event in an annual carnival held on every Easter weekend by the Stawell Athletic Club, with the main race finals on the holiday Monday at Central Park, Stawell in the Grampian Mountains district of Western Victoria, Australia. Due to Covid-19, the race was cancelled this year for the first time, in over 70 years.

Answer 13

Another G2G Challenge: My grandfather, Francis (Known as Frank, Muggs and Muggsy) McGrath is the 3rd from the left in back. (The really big one.) He was Varsity Football, Boxing, Basketball and Golf and athletic all his life, winning New England Left Handed Golfing Titles throughout his life until the end. I have been able to find numerous written references to his accomplishments at all of the sports save Football (he was injured Senior Year at UNH and stopped playing) ... but I grew up in a house where there were a number of newspaper front pages up, celebrating Golden Gloves Titles and matches won in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maryland and have no action photos. I would LOVE to have one of the in-ring news photos or publicity shots, but the main AAU judge and oddsmaker in the area while he was fighting was also named Frank McGrath making it VERY difficult to search.

He sold his house with all of it's contents included while he was on vacation when I was in College, so I have lost any photos that were not in the hands of other relatives. It kills me that he was such a hard-charging athlete when young, yet I don't have a single photograph of him "in action". Any hints on resources or techniques I might try to locate some in-period photos online are welcome!

Comments

Thank you Scott for sharing your grandfather Frank McGarth and the great story of his amazing athletic ability. You didn’t say if you inherited his athletic skills, but in my opinion, you inherited his writing ability.

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Thanks, Alexis. I ran Cross Country and Swam, so went for individual sports. My son, Sean, however took after my grandfather and his siblings. He looks like Frank's brother Matt, plays baseball and basketball (no boxing per edict from his mother) and got a kick out out of this page out of his WWII "Cruise Book".

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Scott, glad to hear you and your boys inherited the athletic talents, and thanks for the great WWII Navy article. You might think of using it in one of these Challenges.

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You have set yourself a challenge!

(1)There may not be any photos of him "in action". Remember that, back then, it was hard to take a picture of someone moving around, and hard to take a picture indoors. I just looked through some high school yearbooks from the 1930's. The first year with action photos was in 1939, and even then the people in the picture were not identified.

(2) Even if there are such pictures, they not be on-line. (Not everything is!) I assume you have tried the newspaper search sites. Even if your grandfather's picture is not there, you should get an idea of the sort of pictures that this newspaper was running at the time.

Have you tried contacting the relatives of any of his team mates?

Did you try the local history department of the library? Also look through the old newspapers to see who the sports writers were. You may be able to track down an old-timer who can tell you much more. Have fun! (My motto is "if you're not having any fun, there's no point in doing it.") Good luck.

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Lots of great ideas, Joyce. Thanks. Sadly, I'd need an old-timer who was but a sprout at the time that he was fighting! I've actually seen a few of the photos as he had both newspaper cover-shots and publicity photos in his study when I was growing up. You're right about 60-120 speed film having a tough time with real "Action" shots.... They just staged them for the picture ;)

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Now there is a category for Golden Gloves https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Golden_Gloves- maybe someone involved in the competition will have photos to contribute including your grandfather in them.

Answer 14

My grandfather played football for John’s Hopkins University, My father was on his high school swim team, football team and baseball team.  He was drafted by the Pittsburg Pirates but joined the Navy instead.  In later years he coached recreation teams in baseball, football and lacrosse.  I played softball and basketball.  My grandson plays soccer and lacrosse.  And my granddaughter plays field hockey and lacrosse.

Answer 15

My grandfather, Frank Honor (back row, left) and members what I presume is the water polo team of 8 Company Royal Garrison Artillery at Gibraltar in 1919. Until I saw this picture and others I had never considered him to be sportsman of any kind.

He was lucky to have spent his WW1 service in Gibraltar rather than on the Western Front. 

Comments

Martin, thank you for sharing your wonderful photo of your grandfather Frank Honor. He certainly is good looking with muscular arms. It is interesting that these Challenges make us look at photos of our ancestors closer than ever before,  and the questions often involve what they are doing.

Answer 16

Still trying to figure out how many times removed we are, but cousin Charles June Truslow played semi-professional baseball in the midwest in the late 1800's /early 1900's.  It was a custom at the time to use a pseudonym to protect one's "good family name."

Comments

That's a great photo of him! Can you get it posted here?

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I can't figure out how to include it in the post.  I did tag Space:52_Photos_Week_46_Athletic in the profile photo, if that helps any.

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Your photo on his profile page is not locked (image of open lock, top right). So you don't need to move it to the free space page. Just go to the picture, put your mouse on it, click "copy image location." Come back here to your answer, click "edit". At the top, click the "picture" icon, looks (sort of) like two mountains and a sun. This will open a dialogue box. Paste the image location in the space for the URL. Along the right side are a bunch of boxes. The top one is WIDTH. Click there. Your picture will appear. Click OK and SAVE. (If your picture is too big or too small, you can change the number in the WIDTH box.) You did this once before, Dorothy, you can do it again!

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Love that baseball glove.

Answer 17

My grandpa and his Grade 8 baseball team at Regal Elementary School in Spokane, WA, 1939.  Like all his young pictures, he doesn't look too pleased to be posing.

Answer 18

According to the Humboldt High School year book, my mother, Marvel Ohmann, was a standout on the girls swim team. :)