BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — In the history of the United States men’s water polo participation at the Olympic Games, only one son followed his father onto the international stage as the duo helped establish the Ruddy clan as the America’s first family of water polo in the dawning decades of the 20th Century.
Born on August 31, 1911 in New York City to former Olympian Joseph Aloysius Ruddy, Sr., Raymond Maurice Ruddy was only 16-years old when represented the United States at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He competed in the men’s 400-meter freestyle, and placed sixth in event final with a time of 5:25.0. He also finished fourth overall in the men’s 1,500-meter freestyle in a time of 21:05.0.
A 1977 inductee to the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame, Ray Ruddy attended Columbia University in New York, where he was a member of the Lions swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) competition. He won the 1930 NCAA national championships in the 440-yard freestyle with a time of 4:55.6. He also swam for the New York Athletic Club and was dominated the competition, winning the prestigious President’s Cup seven years in a row – the first when he was just 15 years old — and the National Long Distance Championship for six consecutive years.
As good as he was as a swimmer, he might have been even better at water polo, competing for Columbia and the New York Athletic Club (NYAC). He was “usually considered the ablest water poloist in the world,” per Time in a 1935 article.
As a water poloist he played on winning New York AC teams at the AAU outdoors in 1931 and 1933-35 and indoors in 1931 and 1935-36. In the variant American form of softball water polo, he helped the NYAC win titles at the AAU Championships both indoors and outdoors in 1934-36 and 1938.
At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, he was a member of the ninth-place U.S. water polo team as the Americans defeated Uruguay (2-1 L), but lost to Belgium (4-3 L) and the Netherlands (3-2 L).
A 2018 inductee to the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame, he was in the running to make the 1940 Olympic Team, but a fall down a flight of stairs on December 3, 1938, caused brain injuries which claimed his life a day later; he was 27 years old.
His path to the Olympics followed his father Joe who represented the United States at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri. Born in 1878 and described by a New York sportswriter as “the Babe Ruth, the Jack Dempsey and the Jim Thorpe,” of water polo, he won a Gold Medal as a member of the winning U.S. team in the men’s 4×50-yard freestyle relay and returned to the water to earn a second “Gold Medal” with his NYAC squad.
The 1904 Olympics were not a true international affair as tensions caused by the Russo–Japanese War and the difficulty of getting to St. Louis in 1904 contributed to the fact that very few top ranked athletes from outside the US and Canada took part in these Games. Only 62 of the 651 athletes who competed in all the events came from outside North America, and only between 12 and 15 nations were represented in all. Some events – including water polo – combined the United States national championship with the Olympic championship. The medal count was also skewed as the host nation won 239 of 283 presented medals – including 78 of 96 Gold Medals.
Competing in the first Olympics to utilize the current three-medal format – gold, silver, and bronze for first, second, and third places – Ruddy helped his team claim Gold among a group of three American teams (New York Athletic Club, Chicago Athletic Association, Missouri Athletic Club) which earned all three medals.
The 1904 games did have some controversy. The German team withdrew when they discovered that the contests would be conducted with a partially deflated ball, which at that time resembled a volleyball, and that goals could only be scored if a player in possession of the ball held it stationary in the opposing goal. Further, the Missouri Athletic Club refused to play the Chicago Athletic Club for the silver medal. Finally, the competition took place at Forest Park, the location of both the Olympics and the World’s Fair, in a pond called “Life Saving Exhibition Lake”. The name would prove to be inappropriate as the water polo players, who were subjected to longer immersions in the polluted and turgid water than either swimmers or divers, were especially affected by the contamination. Due to the immersion in the water, four American players would die of typhoid fever from e.coli bacteria in the water.
Controversy continues to this day as the 1904 Olympic slate did not list water polo as a demonstration sport – although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) records as of today do not recognize the final results due to one nation sweeping all three medals.
Besides Raymond, 1977 USA Water Polo and 1986 NYAC Hall of Fame member Joseph Ruddy had two other sons and two daughters. His oldest son and namesake, Joseph Ruddy, Jr., graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1930, played water polo in Annapolis, won the Navy Cross for heroism as an aviator in World War II and became a Rear Admiral – in addition to helping to continue the family tradition of New York water polo.
The younger Joe Ruddy – who may have made the 1940 Olympic team if not for the outbreak of World War II – combined with his other brother, Donald Ruddy, to help the NYAC teams coached by their father in the 1930s claim 10 consecutive undefeated seasons to rate as the dominant program in the first half of the 20th century.
The elder Joseph Ruddy died at home in 1962 at the age of 84, while the younger passed away in 1998 at the age of 91.
