A gifted athlete and builder whose career spans over four decades and several sports, Eleanor (Cave) Whyte first made national news in the late 1940s when she broke the Canadian high jump record. After becoming BC’s senior high jump champion in 1950, she moved on to other sports such as basketball, field hockey, and swimming.

During that same period, Whyte also played basketball for the Vancouver Eilers team that won five national championships. In 1959, she had to decline the honour of playing on the Canadian Pan American basketball team as she was already selected to the Canadian women’s field hockey team going to the world championships in Amsterdam.

Whyte then turned her incredible energy to the administrative side of sport. She became president of the Vancouver Women’s Field Hockey Association (1959-61), vice-president of the Canadian Amateur Basketball Association (1961-66), and managed the 1963 Canadian Pan American Games basketball team in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Whyte served as a member of the three-person task force that negotiated and wrote the first Canadian Women’s Field Hockey Association constitution.

After taking time off to raise a family, Eleanor returned to sports in the 1970s, managing several Canadian swimming teams and becoming a swimming referee with international standing.

On the BC Section of the Canadian Amateur Swimming Association, she served as vice-president from 1976-78 and president from 1978-81. She served as president of the Lord Byng Swim Club from 1975-76 and filled the same position with the New Westminster Hyacks Club from 1976-78. She stood as co-chair of Swim BC’s 1983 Conduct and Ethics Committee.