Augustana College (Ill.) Names Aquatic Facility after Pioneer Anne Greve Lund

Anna Greve Lund Natatorium Photo Courtesy: Augustana College

Augustana College (Ill.) this week announced that it will name its new aquatic facility after alumna and athletics pioneer Anne Greve Lund.

Lund, a 1926 graduate of Augustana, was the school’s first director of women’s athletics, assuming the position while still an undergrad and serving from 1924-34. (The school had separate men’s and women’s athletics directors until 2004.)

Lund organized teams in basketball (including two women’s varsity squads), baseball, volleyball, and tennis. She also spearheaded education by the Red Cross Lifesaving Corps and lessons in archery, horseback riding and riflery. Her slogan was, “Every girl an athlete, participating in at least one sport.”

Lund, a native of Rock Island where the college is located, married classmate Wendell Lund in 1934. They moved to Washington D.C., where she died in 1979.

“When I arrived at Augustana there were no spaces named for heroic women leaders,” Augustana College president Steve Bahls said in a press release. “Their stories were not being told and their impact was being overlooked. We’ve made progress, but we’d not yet told the story of Anne Greve Lund, whose impact almost 100 years ago was truly groundbreaking,”

The Anne Greve Lund Natatorium is scheduled to open in the spring. It’ll be housed in the Peter J. Lindberg, M.D., Center for Health and Human Performance, part of an $18-million investment in the college. The Vikings field men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams and recently added men’s and women’s water polo. They compete in Division III.

The natatorium will feature ten lanes for training with the possibility of 15 for competition. It will include space for spectators, team rooms, offices, locker rooms and other workout spaces. Also included is a “Swim Performance Lab featuring a SwimEx pool system for sports physical therapy, training and swimming stroke analysis.”

“We are excited,” Augustana head coach Dan Lloyd told KWQC. “Our recruits are excited our team is excited, it’s going to be a gamechanger for the way our program moves forward and is going to make a huge difference for our athletes in terms of the way we are going to be able to train and compete.”

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