Steve Anderson was a champion Olympic medalist during his heyday in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A few old-timers and sports buffs remember him as a Big Man on Campus, meaning the University of Washington campus.
Some years ago, while sitting in the player’s lounge of a venerable Seattle, Washington club, I noted the relaxed collection of well-known athletes from several sports squeezed into seats and at the bar. I turned to a friend and savvy sports figure and asked him which athlete among this contingent he considered the “greatest.” After a few minutes, he said “Steve Anderson.”
In a far corner, surrounded by young muscle and full heads of hair, was a gaunt, 80-year-old gentleman with a few strands of grey on his dome: Steve Anderson.
Steve Anderson was born on April 6, 1906 in Portsmouth, Ohio, and his family moved to Seattle when he was a boy. At Seattle’s Queen Anne High School Steve’s tall, handsome athletic presence stood out. Upon entering the University of Washington his natural speed and athletic ability impressed the famous track and field coach Clarence S. “Hec” Edmondson. Edmondson was a national figure (the UW Track and Field complex today bears his name). Before coaching Steve Anderson, Edmondson achieved international prominence coaching Herm Brix and Paul Jessup to world records in the shotput and discus respectively.
In 1928, Anderson won the low hurdles at the Pacific Coast Conference meet with a time of 22.6 and achieved a 14.4 in the high hurdles — respectable times in today’s meets. That same year he led the UW team to 4th place in the nationals and represented the United States at the Olympics in Amsterdam. At the Olympics, Anderson placed second (by a photo finish) in the 110-meter high hurdles to a South African competitor. Also in 1928, Anderson won the first local 80-yard indoor hurdle race in the new U.W. Pavilion, a modern facility later named for coach Edmondson.
During the next two years lanky Steve Anderson never lost in dual-meet competition. In 1930 he tied the world high-hurdle record twice, once in the national meet at Pittsburgh and again during the U.S.-British Commonwealth Games.
Anderson achieved the collegiate encomium of Big Man on Campus: he joined the local chapter of Phi Delta Theta, was co-captain of the track team, president of the Spiked Shoe Club, and his name is atop the U.W. Hall of Fame memorial. Anderson married his college sweetheart, red-haired Virginia, and they produced two sons, Graham and Steve.
A personal note: On a balmy day at Seattle’s Greenlake track field in the 1950s my father, Al Rochester, brought his friend Steve Anderson to watch me run the hurdles for Garfield High School. Before my race I watched the 50-year-old former great champion (in a business suit and tie) take several hurdles and casually chop a few steps between the barriers. Although I later became All-City champion, my modest efforts will always be in the shadow of the UW’s great Steve Anderson.
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