Historic Sporting Events

For many of the last 38 years, as Penn Athletic’s director of special events, Kowalski  has to be on the short list, maybe even at the top of it, for people who spent the most combined lifetime time at the Palestra and Franklin Field. Her earliest work days were as an undergrad selling tickets and answering to her boss who was also her father, and in honor of the two, the front lobby box office will be named the Donohue-Kowalski Box Office.

The Lower Merion High graduate looms large in the Philly community and around the world, as fans share memories from the Palestra to Beijing. 

88-year-old Greg Bell was one of the top athletes of his era. Competing for Indiana, he broke a Penn Relays record and captured four individual titles—three in his specialty, the long jump—from 1956 through 1958. Returning to Franklin Field in 2019, he carried his Olympic gold medal from the 1956 Melbourne Games, which he won seven months after his first Relay record. 

No matter where his life and his pursuits take him, the Jamaican icon always will remember his performances at the Penn Relays and what the carnival has done to help young Jamaican athletes get noticed by U.S. colleges.

It has been 40 years since Renaldo Nehemiah created one of the most indelible memories in the history of the Penn Relays with his history-making 44.3-second anchor leg for Maryland.