Four American women have won Olympic gold in the high jump. This Temple Owl was first.

Yaroslava Mahuchikh, a Ukrainian high jumper, broke a 37-year-old women’s world record when she cleared 2.10 meters (6.88 feet) at an Olympic tuneup last month.

Mahuchikh followed it up with Ukraine’s first individual gold medal of the Paris Games on Aug. 4.

Her feat would have been unimaginable 100 years ago, when women were not allowed to compete in track events at the Olympics. But after the door opened for women in 1928, Mahuchikh’s path was partially paved by Jean Shiley, a teenage girl from Havertown who helped lay the foundations of the sport.

Shiley started her track career with Haverford High School and competed at scholastic meets in the area. In 1928, she started training with Penn track coach Lawson Robertson at Franklin Field. Robertson was a retired Olympian who had won bronze in the standing high jump in 1904, and in addition to his duties at Penn, served as the U.S. Olympic coach from 1924 to 1936.

In their first meeting, Shiley cleared a 1.50 meter (4-foot-11) bar without the assistance of traditional spikes.

“Robertson was convinced right there that the Haverford girl was a champion,” wrote the Pittsburgh Press in 1928.

Back at Haverford, Shiley was proving Robertson right. She helped her track team to the Delco title that year, beating out a field of 30 contestants in the running high jump and also taking home first place in the standing long jump. It was Haverford’s first win since the Delco meet began in 1923.

Shiley, 16 at the time, competed at the U.S. trials a month later in Newark, N.J., which doubled as the women’s national championship. It marked the first time women were included, though only four events were contested for Olympic qualification: 100-meter dash, 800 meters, high jump, and discus throw.

Shiley lost the high jump title in a jump-off against Mildred Wiley, who was 10 years her senior, but made the Olympic team by virtue of a second-place finish.

In Amsterdam, Shiley finished in fourth place, while Wiley took bronze. Despite missing the podium, Shiley was a hometown hero — local newspapers liked to call her “our Jean.” After she returned to the U.S. on the steamship Roosevelt, Shiley and her parents drove back home from New York. As they drove into Haverford Township, Shiley was surprised with a parade.

“More than a hundred automobiles, cars of all descriptions and makes were decorated gayly with American flags and big signs of ‘Welcome Home Jean,’” wrote the Delaware County Daily Times on Aug. 27, 1928.

Shiley was presented with a college scholarship at the reception, though she had one year of high school remaining. She returned to Haverford, where she played basketball and continued to star on the track.

Shiley reportedly was called “Lindy” by her high school classmates, because the first time she cleared a 5-foot bar happened on the same day that Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris.

“Haverford high school students said today they considered the feats ‘a pair of famous hops’ and ever since have called the star girl athlete ‘Lindy,’” The Lebanon Daily News wrote in 1932.

In 1929, Shiley set the American indoor running high jump record, 1.53 meters (5-⅛) at the Meadowbrook Games. She claimed the world record that March at the indoor nationals, beating Wiley with a jump of 1.60 meters (5-3⅛).

Shiley’s biggest rival, Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson, emerged on the track and field scene in 1930.

Didrikson would later be best known for her golf prowess — she became the first woman to compete on the PGA Tour when she played in the 1938 Los Angeles Open — and she also starred in basketball and baseball. Didrikson, a Texas native, pitched four innings in major league spring training games, including one for the Philadelphia Athletics in which she allowed one walk and zero hits.

After graduating from Haverford High School, Shiley continued her studies at Temple. She won the national high jump title every year through 1931, and tied Didrikson for the championship in 1932. They both made the U.S. team for the Olympic games that summer in Los Angeles, and Didrikson also qualified for the 80-meter hurdles and javelin throw.

Shiley had suffered a bout of appendicitis six months before the Games. Doctors warned Shiley that her jumping days could be over, but she refused to quit. Shiley was selected as the captain of the American women’s delegation — despite being 21, she was one of only three veterans on the team.

Didrikson won Olympic gold in the javelin and the 80-meter hurdles and set world records in both events. She was looking to complete the sweep with a high jump gold, and Shiley was the one standing in her way.

At the Olympics, Shiley and Didrikson found themselves in a tie for gold, after both cleared a new world-record height of 1.65 meters (5-5) and both failed at 1.67 meters (5-5¾).

The judges called for a jump-off at 1.66 meters (5-5¼), and while both cleared the bar, Didrikson’s jump was deemed illegal, and Shiley was declared the champion. Didrikson was awarded silver.

“The rule demands that the head follow the hands and feet across the bar,” The Inquirer wrote. “Miss Didrikson had been jumping with a whirl and a flip that sent her head downward after clearing the bar.”

Didrikson had been using the same style for the entire competition and had not been issued a warning. But the ruling stood, and Shiley became the first Temple athlete to win an Olympic gold in any sport.

Didrikson did get to share a world record with Shiley, however. World athletics rules at the time held that jump-offs did not count for world records, so they instead shared the record of 1.65 meters, which stood until 1939.

Though it was not an official record, the height Shiley cleared for gold would not be surpassed until 1943.

Shiley never defended her medal; she retired from Olympic competition in 1933. At the time, the Olympics strictly enforced an “amateur code,” and she gave up her status by taking a job as a swim instructor after graduating from Temple. Didrikson lost her amateur status by appearing in an automobile advertisement and also never competed at another Olympics.

Without their two best jumpers at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the U.S. failed to reach the podium, with American jumper Annette Rogers tying for sixth place.

To date, the U.S. has won four gold medals in the history of women’s Olympic high jump. But a Temple Owl will forever be the first.