Harvard Athletics
The earliest Australian connections with athletics at Harvard were coaches. Steve O’Donnell was a boxing coach in the years 1898–1917. James Wray was rowing coach in the years 1904–1915.
The Australian swimmer Bill Kendall competed at the Berlin Olympic Games (1936) before enrolling at Harvard College as a member of the Class of 1940 and being elected captain of the freshmen's swimming team (1937).
Stephen A. (Steve) O’Donnell (1866—1925) was born in Australia to Irish parents. He learnt boxing in Sydney from the West Indian-born Peter Jackson. The first records of fights involving O’Donnell come from 1886. In the early 1890s he was the lessee of a roller skating rink in Charters Towers, Queensland, where he also staged and participated in boxing matches. He turned professional in 1892, travelling to the United States in 1893 to pursue his career with mixed success. In 1895 he was knocked out after 63 seconds in a bout with Peter Maher who afterward claimed the heavyweight championship of the world. O’Donnell boxed with Theodore Roosevelt who is said to have been instrumental in his appointment as boxing coach at Harvard where he is recorded as a boxing coach from 1898 until at least 1917. T. S. Eliot was among those trained at O’Donnell’s gymnasium in the Boston South End. O’Donnell died in Boston in 1925.
O’Donnell has been suggested as a prototype of Eliot’s ‘apeneck Sweeney.’
“The boxing lessons, meanwhile, took place at a toughish gymnasium in Boston's South End, where, under the tutelage of an ex-pugilist with some such monicker as Steve O'Donnell, he learned not only the rudiments of boxing, but also, as he put it, ‘how to swarm with passion up a rope’—his delight in this attainment was manifest. Was Steve O’Donnell the prototype of Sweeney as some have suggested? Anyway, it was our habit to dine together after these gymnastic afternoons, usually at the Greek restaurant in Stuart Street, a small, dirty, and wonderfully inexpensive establishment which was in fact half restaurant and half poolroom; and it was here on one unfortunate occasion, when he had accidentally hit Steve too hard, that he turned up with a magnificent black eye, a shiner that did Steve great credit: it was really iridescent.” [Conrad Aiken, King Bolo and Others, in T. S. Eliot, A Symposium 1948]
"I asked Eliot about the prototype of the rough-and-ready Sweeney image in his poems — for example, in “Sweeney Erect” and “Sweeney Agonistes.” He had commented once, “It happens that I know many Sweeneys, some of them among friends of mine. I happen to like the name. It has a pleasant sound.”
Among his friends named Sweeney was John Lincoln Sweeney, a humanities preceptor at Harvard. At the River Club, I said, “Your classmate, Conrad Aiken, traces Sweeney to your boxing instructor in the South End of Boston.”
“There were others,” Eliot said — among them the bartender at the Opera Exchange, also in Boston, where he had gathered with friends in his Harvard student days, circling Champagne corks on the table in a fortune-telling game. Eliot lifted his forefinger and waved it in a circle.
Francis Sweeney SJ, Boston College. [Boston College Magazine, Winter 2001; recalling meeting with T. S. Eliot in New York, November 1963]
Stephen A. (Steve) O’Donnell (1866—1925) was born in Australia to Irish parents. He learnt boxing in Sydney from the West Indian-born Peter Jackson. The first records of fights involving O’Donnell come from 1886. In the early 1890s he was the lessee of a roller skating rink in Charters Towers, Queensland, where he also staged and participated in boxing matches. He turned professional in 1892, travelling to the United States in 1893 to pursue his career with mixed success. In 1895 he was knocked out after 63 seconds in a bout with Peter Maher who afterward claimed the heavyweight championship of the world. O’Donnell boxed with Theodore Roosevelt who is said to have been instrumental in his appointment as boxing coach at Harvard where he is recorded as a boxing coach from 1898 until at least 1917. T. S. Eliot was among those trained at O’Donnell’s gymnasium in the Boston South End. O’Donnell died in Boston in 1925.
O’Donnell has been suggested as a prototype of Eliot’s ‘apeneck Sweeney.’
“The boxing lessons, meanwhile, took place at a toughish gymnasium in Boston's South End, where, under the tutelage of an ex-pugilist with some such monicker as Steve O'Donnell, he learned not only the rudiments of boxing, but also, as he put it, ‘how to swarm with passion up a rope’—his delight in this attainment was manifest. Was Steve O’Donnell the prototype of Sweeney as some have suggested? Anyway, it was our habit to dine together after these gymnastic afternoons, usually at the Greek restaurant in Stuart Street, a small, dirty, and wonderfully inexpensive establishment which was in fact half restaurant and half poolroom; and it was here on one unfortunate occasion, when he had accidentally hit Steve too hard, that he turned up with a magnificent black eye, a shiner that did Steve great credit: it was really iridescent.” [Conrad Aiken, King Bolo and Others, in T. S. Eliot, A Symposium 1948]
"I asked Eliot about the prototype of the rough-and-ready Sweeney image in his poems — for example, in “Sweeney Erect” and “Sweeney Agonistes.” He had commented once, “It happens that I know many Sweeneys, some of them among friends of mine. I happen to like the name. It has a pleasant sound.”
Among his friends named Sweeney was John Lincoln Sweeney, a humanities preceptor at Harvard. At the River Club, I said, “Your classmate, Conrad Aiken, traces Sweeney to your boxing instructor in the South End of Boston.”
“There were others,” Eliot said — among them the bartender at the Opera Exchange, also in Boston, where he had gathered with friends in his Harvard student days, circling Champagne corks on the table in a fortune-telling game. Eliot lifted his forefinger and waved it in a circle.
Francis Sweeney SJ, Boston College. [Boston College Magazine, Winter 2001; recalling meeting with T. S. Eliot in New York, November 1963]
James Wray (1871–1954) was a fisherman on the New South Wales south coast and a member of the Balmain Working Men's Rowing Club. In 1896, Wray travelled to England with the world champion sculler Jim Stanbury as companion and trainer. Stanbury successfully defended his title against the Englishman Charles Harding but was then defeated by the Canadian Jake Gaudaur. Wray remained in England as a professional sculler after Stanbury’s return to Australia. Over the next few years, Wray shuttled back and forth across the Atlantic attempting to arrange a race with Gaudaur for the world championship, but his challenges went unanswered. In September 1900, Wray was defeated by George Towns, another Australian, in a race on the Thames for the championship of England.
Early in 1901, Wray left England for the United States to train a Harvard student and soon obtained coaching positions at the Union Boat Club and then the Weld Boat Club (October 1901–April 1904). In April 1904, Wray left Cambridge to coach the Detroit Boat Club but returned in December on a contract for five years as Harvard’s first professional rowing coach. Under the terms of the contract, Wray was subservient to the captain of the University crew. The contract was renewed for five years in March 1909 and another five years in February 1914. In September 1915, Wray was abruptly dismissed with Harvard agreeing to pay out the remainder of his contract. I will now turn to Wray’s record as a coach and the reasons for his dismissal.
In the 18 years prior to Wray’s appointment (1886–1904) Yale had won the annual boat race 16 times and Harvard only twice. After Wray’s appointment, Yale won in 1905 and 1907, but Harvard won in 1906 and for six years from 1908 to 1913. At the time, this was the longest uninterrupted winning streak for Harvard in the history of the race. In the 1914 season, Harvard was defeated by Yale but Harvard’s second eight defeated Oxford and Cambridge in the Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta. Harvard’s first eight was ineligible to compete at the Regatta because of their professional coach (Wray). The second eight had ceased to be coached by Wray six weeks before the Regatta to allow them to meet amateur requirements.
The Harvard crew captained by Murray and coached by Wray was beaten by Yale in the 1915 race, followed by Wray’s dismissal. Soon after, articles appeared in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine claiming that Harvard’s success during Wray’s tenure had been despite, rather than because, of Wray.
Wray’s dismissal appears to have arisen from conflict with undergraduate members of the crew, in particular with Henry A. Murray, Jr. the future Harvard professor of psychology. Murray had been a member of the crew defeated by Yale in 1914 and was elected captain of the crew for the following academic year, placing him in a position of formal authority over Wray. Murray was also elected to the Committee on Athletics. Murray’s biographer, Forrest Robinson, had access to Murray’s diary and discusses the conflict in “Love’s story told” (1992). He suggests that, among other sources of friction, the patrician Murray resented the lack of social deference shown by the plebeian Wray.
As captain, Murray organized the crew against Wray. Murray’s diaries, and the memories of Wray’s grandson John C. Wray II (personal communication), agree on the two principal sources of tactical disagreement. First, Wray believed in starting fast whereas Murray believed in starting slow with a burst at the end. Second, Wray believed in changing the crew to find the best team for the boat but Murray believed in maintaining team stability. John C. Wray II recalls his grandfather telling the family that he had been prevented from putting the best rowers on the boat and had been dismissed for trying to place a Jewish rower on the crew.
Wray was Cornell’s coach from 1927 to 1936. He died in 1954 as a sequel to becoming lost and suffering from exposure in the woods near Ithaca. The James Wray Memorial Trophy was donated by Cornell’s 1930 crew, varsity champions at the IRA regatta. It is awarded to the winner of the annual rowing regatta between Cornell and Penn.