Irving "Moon" Mondschein (February 7, 1924 – June 5, 2015) was an American track and field athlete and football player.[1] [2]
Mondschein, who was Jewish, was born in Brooklyn, New York.[1] [3] [4] He attended Boys High School, where he ran track.[5] He also ran for the New York Pioneer Club.[1] [6] He entered the US Army in 1943.[7] He became a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternal organization while attending New York University[8] His son, Brian, was a world-class decathlete in the 1980s.[7] His grandson, also named Brian, was an All-American pole vaulter at Virginia Tech.
He was AAU decathlon champion in 1944, and in 1946 and 1947.[1] [9] He won the 1944 Olympic Trials and would have been the top American representative had the Olympic Games been held that year.[10] He was NCAA high jump champion in both 1947 and 1948, competing for New York University.[1] [4] [9] As of 2015, he still held NYU's record in the outdoor high jump—6 feet, 7¾ inches. He also played football as an end for NYU in 1946, earning All-East honors.[7] [9] [11] He competed in the 1948 Olympics for the United States in decathlon, coming in eighth, as teammate Bob Mathias won the gold medal.[1] In his career, he was ranked third in the world in outdoor high jump and tenth in the decathlon in 1947; sixth in the indoor high jump and eighth in the decathlon in 1948; and third in the outdoor high jump and sixth in the decathlon in 1949.[12]
He later coached track, basketball, and football at Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania, starting in 1949.[1] [13] He coached the US track and field team at the 1950 Maccabiah Games, which included Olympian Henry Laskau (national champion and world record holder) who won a gold medal in racewalking, and was also an advisor to the Israeli Ministry of Education, helping for two years to prepare the country's athletes for the 1952 Olympics.[14] [1] [7] Irv was also athletic coach (Track) at Lawrence High School, Cedarhurst, NY (Nassau County) from 1956-65. He was then a coach at the University of Pennsylvania; first the assistant track coach (1965–79) and then the head coach (1979–87).[7] He was also an assistant coach on the 1988 U.S. Olympic team.[11] He was previously an assistant coach at Kutztown University,[7] and also volunteered as an assistant coach at Haverford College. He also served as an assistant coach at La Salle University in Philadelphia.[15]
He is a member of the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, the New York Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.[11] [16] [17] He is also a member of the NYU Athletics Hall of Fame, and the U.S. Track & Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.[18] [19]