Eugene Schobinger

Eugene Schobinger, the son of Swiss immigrants, was a versatile athlete from Chicago. His foremost disciplines in track and field were the pole vault and the high hurdles. In the pole vault, he placed in the top 20 of the world rankings for several years, beginning in 1908 by setting an American interscholastic record. In 1910, he won silver in the AAU Championships, his only medal at the national championships. Over the high hurdles, his best performance also came in 1910, winning the Illinois High School Association Championship. In 1912, Schobinger tried his hand at the decathlon in the Olympic Trials, eventually placing fourth. Subsequently, he was selected for the US team in the decathlon for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics but did not start.

Schobinger graduated from the Harvard School for Boys in Chicago, where his father was headmaster, and then attended the University of Illinois. For Illinois, he won the Big Ten Indoor Championship in the pole vault twice (1914 and 1915) and once the outdoor championship. He also represented the university in football as fullback of Illinois’ Western Conference Championship team and in water polo. He eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in Municipal and Sanitary Engineering, but later became a salesman for Ogilvie and Heneage, a fine men’s clothing and haberdashery store in Chicago. During World War I, Schobinger was enlisted as 1st Lieutenant of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and later served in France.

In 1920, he married Raymonde Shippey. The couple had two sons and a daughter. Schobinger held executive positions in various underground construction companies in Chicago including the Marshall Engineering Corporation and the Lake States Engineering Company.