Bringing Bronze Back to Ireland

Fiona Murtagh, FCRH ’16, won a bronze medal as part of Ireland’s women’s coxless four rowing team on July 27. Murtagh, an Irish native, rowed for Fordham as an undergraduate after transferring from the National University of Ireland in Galway. As a Ram, she led women’s rowing to two victories at the Head of Charles regatta and was named to the All-Atlantic 10 first team in 2016.

In early August, Murtagh arrived back to her hometown of Moycullen, in County Galway, with fans cheering her on amid celebratory bonfires. After spending a month before the Olympics in a training bubble, Murtagh told The Irish Times, “We deserve a break to spend time with family and friends. It’s been so long since we have seen anyone.”

Forget Tokyo, the real Olympic village is Moycullen this evening! A homecoming to welcome back rowing medallist Fiona Murtagh – not every day an Olympic medal comes through the parish. #Olympics #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/s3wjKOY6pN

— Dr. Barry Houlihan (@stagedreaction) August 1, 2021

A ‘Gutsy’ Performance from a U.S. Pitcher

Soon after Murtagh received a hero’s welcome in Ireland, former Rams pitcher Nick Martinez took the mound as the U.S. baseball team’s starting pitcher in the gold medal game against Japan on August 7. He earned the starting nod after striking out nine and picking up a win against South Korea in the group stage. Although the U.S. fell to Japan, 2-0, to claim the silver medal, Martinez made a strong showing, striking out seven batters over six innings while allowing one run. In the publication’s game recap, USA Today called Martinez’s performance “gutsy” and stated that he “[kept]the U.S. in the ball game.”

Martinez, who was drafted by the Texas Rangers in 2011, after his junior year at the Gabelli School of Business, made his Major League Baseball debut for the Rangers in 2014 and started 68 games for the team over four seasons—including several games at Yankee Stadium. He has been pitching professionally in Japan since 2018, first for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and currently for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

Rowing for Gold and Silver in St. Louis

Martinez and Murtagh are not the first Rams to take their places on the Olympic podium. In 1904, at the summer games in St. Louis, 1894 Fordham graduate John J. F. “Jack” Mulcahy and his partner, William Varley, won gold and silver for the U.S. in two rowing events: the double sculls and pair without coxswain, respectively. Mulcahy had developed an interest in rowing at an early age, at a time when the Harlem River played host to popular regattas.

After the Olympics, Mulcahy worked briefly as a New York City alderman and as vice president of Midvale Steel Company. He returned to Fordham in 1915 to help the University launch its rowing program and served as the team’s inaugural coach. Vincent M. Doherty, a 1918 graduate and a member of the 1915 freshman crew, recalled that Mulcahy “was a stern master,” but that “he had the affection and respect of every man on the squad.”

A Steeplechase Medal as a Student

At 1932’s Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Joe McCluskey, then a Fordham junior, won bronze in the steeplechase—a seven-and-a-half-lap race that includes both standard hurdles and water jumps. In his 2002 obituary, The New York Times noted that had officials not made a mistake in lap counts, McCluskey would have won silver.

In the 1933 edition of the Fordham Maroon yearbook, McCluskey’s entry read, “Any introduction to this son of Fordham would be superfluous for he is known to every man on the campus because of his athletic conquests,” and his classmates recognized him as the student who had “Done Most for Fordham.” Throughout his career, McCluskey won 27 U.S. track and field titles.

“I don’t think I had as much ability as some others,” he once said, “but I put more into it. When you can’t stand at the end of a race, you know you’ve given everything. I ran a lot of races when I couldn’t stand at the end.”

Double Gold and an Olympic Record

Also willing to push himself to exhaustion was Tom Courtney, FCRH ’55, who won the gold medal for the United States in the men’s 800-meter race at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

“It was a new kind of agony for me,” Courtney recalled of the race, in which he set an Olympic record time of 1:47.7. “I had never run myself into such a state. My head was exploding, my stomach ripping, and even the tips of my fingers ached.”

Five days after that race, he earned another gold medal, as the anchor of the U.S.’s four-man, 1,600-meter relay team.

“When I got back to the States, I appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show,” Courtney wrote in his memoir, The Inside Track (Page Publishing, 2018). “There was a big party at Leone’s Restaurant, and a wonderful parade down Fordham Road. I was in a convertible with my coach, Artie O’Conner. He was very motivational for me. … He loved Fordham and it helped me to love Fordham.”

After the Olympics, Courtney went on to earn an M.B.A. from Harvard and had a long career in business. He retired in 2011 as chairman of the board of Oppenheimer Funds.

Mulcahy, McCluskey, and Courtney are all members of the Fordham University Athletics Hall of Fame.

Fiona Murtagh, FCRH ’16; incoming student Alexander Gadegaard Shah; and alumnus Nick Martinez are competing in rowing, swimming, and baseball, respectively.

Murtagh, a native of Galway, is rowing for Ireland. She arrived at Fordham in 2013 and made her mark on the rowing program immediately, with the Fordham club winning the Head of Charles regatta in Boston two years in a row.

The first win, in 2013, was the first time a Fordham women’s crew had won at the prestigious regatta. Murtagh also earned first-team All-Atlantic 10 honors in 2016 when she helped the Rams to a third-place team finish.

In Tokyo, Murtagh and her Irish teammates placed second in the women’s coxless four on July 23 and qualified for the final, which will take place on July 26.

UPDATE: Murtagh and the Women’s Four won the Bronze–Ireland’s first medal in the Tokyo games.

Shah, who will start at Fordham College at Rose Hill this fall, is one of five athletes representing Nepal at the Olympics this year.

A member of this year’s recruiting class for men’s swimming, he was the team MVP and team captain at the Lincoln School in Kathmandu, Nepal, finishing with multiple school and national records. He then swam for Nepal Swimming, earning their team MVP award in 2019, and earned a wild card qualifier spot for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

He will swim the 100-meter freestyle, which is set to begin on July 27 and finish on July 29.

Martinez, a native of Miami, is on the baseball roster for Team USA. He attended Fordham for three years, where he was a starting second baseman and a relief pitcher. He is Fordham’s first baseball Olympian since Bobby Kingsbury, who played for Team Greece in 2004.

Martinez was drafted by the Texas Rangers in 2011 and played for the team’s farm system and the major league team until 2018 when he signed a contract to pitch for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan. He currently pitches for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in the Japanese League. Team USA will open the Olympic Games baseball tournament on Friday, July 30, against Israel. They join the Dominican Republic, Israel, Japan, Korea, and Mexico in the six-team field.

When Nick Martinez made his major league debut in 2014, he became the first player out of Fordham to appear in a big-league game since 2001. That’s when 14-year veteran Pete Harnisch, GABELLI ’87, last pitched in the majors.

Texas selected Martinez in the 18th round of the 2011 draft, weeks after he completed his junior year at the Gabelli School of Business. He’s since made 57 appearances on the mound with the Rangers, including 47 starts. Although he’s spent much of this season with the team’s triple-A affiliate, the Rangers recalled him from the minors earlier this month. Tonight he’ll return to the mound in the Bronx to face the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, where he’s pitched well in two previous outings, earning the win in the Rangers’ 15-4 victory on May 23, 2015.

He spoke with FORDHAM magazine Tuesday afternoon, the day before his start.

How different is it for you to come to New York on a road trip, having spent time here while at Fordham?
It’s kind of like a second homecoming. Obviously whenever we play in Florida, and play the Marlins [in Miami], that’s [a homecoming for me too because it’s] where I’m from and grew up playing the game. But having spent three years here in New York, it does feel like home to me, having come to Yankee games when I was at Fordham. I’ve got all my college buddies, a lot of close friends of mine that live here still.

How many people do you have coming out to see you?
Not as many as the first couple of times I pitched here. I just got called up, so it was kind of late notice—flights being so expensive, they couldn’t plan in advance. I’ve got a handful of family and about 10 or 12 college buddies coming to the game.

Your Twitter avatar is a photo of you with Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, in 2015. What was it like meeting him?
Oh man, it was awesome. I was awestruck at first. And then once we got talking, I thought it was extremely cool just being able to talk about our campus and our school, and some of the other guys that came before me. He was sharp, naming some of the guys that were on the [Fordham] team currently, and how we just had a couple guys drafted. I just thought it was extremely cool that we had that connection.

When you were in college, it had been a while since a Fordham player had made it to the majors. Was that track record something you were thinking about?
I’ve always had aspirations of being a big-league player. When I was being recruited to play college ball, I didn’t look at what school was going to [give me] a better chance of getting drafted. I just kind of looked at, first, where am I going to get the best education, and secondly, am I going to get a chance to play? And Fordham hit the criteria perfectly. It was a great fit. As soon as I walked on campus, I fell in love with it. I had a shot to start right away, and I was able to play. As long as you’re able to play, you find that exposure. If you’re good enough, someone will find you. I wasn’t too worried about if I was going to get noticed. I wasn’t thinking about the draft. I was more geared toward just working hard and just trying to be the best player I can be.

Is there anywhere you’re looking to go while you’re in New York this week?
You know, I did plan on going to Fordham today, but our game last night ran until about 4 o’clock in the morning with that rain delay, so I had to cancel that. But I did plan to go and say hello to some people on campus, and maybe grab some lunch on Arthur Avenue, but I couldn’t do that today. Maybe next time.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06.

Update (June 30): Martinez started for Texas last night. When he left the game, with two runners on and no outs in the sixth inning, the Rangers led, 6-1, and he seemed destined for his second career win at Yankee Stadium. In the ninth, however, the Yankees mounted a major comeback, scoring six runs and winning the game, 9-7, on a walk-off home run.