Bio

As chair of the Physical Education Department for 42 years, Miss von Borries introduced individual sports and modern dance to Goucher College.  A physical education professor at Goucher from 1921  until 1963, she also taught recreation courses and served as a camp counselor—and for much of this time, without any of the athletics facilities we deem indispensible today.

By 1947, when the last of the gymnasiums on Goucher’s Baltimore City campus was sold, the Physical Education Department became homeless.

For the next seven years, the department had to make do with the gyms and pools of local schools and colleges, as well as nearby bowling alleys and skating rinks.   President Otto Kraushaar said he found it “unimaginable” that von Borries could maintain a physical education department without any facilities. She worked tirelessly with the Faculty Planning Committee  to design a new home for physical education.

The pool inside Goucher’s Aquatics Center was named the Eline von Borries Pool. In fact, Miss von Borries and Kraushaar celebrated the overall construction of athletic facilities on the campus and the completion of the pool by jumping in; Professor von Borries was clad in a 1912 Goucher bathing suit and Dr. Kraushaar was wearing his business suit.

A skilled equestrian, Miss von Borries was described as a “master teacher.”  Ginny Caruthers, ’60, remembers “that Miss von B had a tremendous amount of patience, an even larger amount of energy, and was a great teacher”.

They did mostly equitation and trail riding in the Riding Club under the direction of von Borries.  In fact, when Carruthers first arrived at Goucher, they had not built the beltway so you could ride the trails from Goucher right up into the Loch Raven Reservoir.  She was instrumental in forming the Goucher Athletic League, a group of students who performed many services on campus, small and great, for the student body.

The League prepared hot dogs for the Army-Navy hockey game, directed extracurricular athletics, helped with May Day Gymkana, and planned tournaments and campus parties.

The 1949 Donnybrook Fair observed that von Borries, as Riding Club adviser, had the whole club out every Wednesday morning exploring the paths of the Loch Raven Reservoir.  In order to earn the “exclusive privilege” of membership in the club, a rider was required to “pass a stringent test and demonstrate that she can handle a horse under all situations.”

Eline von Borries died August 10, 1978, at her home in Miami. She was 85.