Jill Sterkel

Who is Jill Sterkel?

Jill Ann Sterkel is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder. Sterkel won four medals in three Olympic Games spanning twelve years. She is currently the women's head coach of the Texas Longhorns swimming and diving team at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sterkel was born in Hacienda Heights, California. She graduated from Glen A. Wilson High School in Hacienda Heights. She subsequently attended the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, where she swam for the Texas Longhorns swimming and diving team in Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women and National Collegiate Athletic Association competition from 1980 to 1983. As a senior in 1983, Sterkel won the NCAA national championships in 50-yard butterfly and 100-yard butterfly.

Sterkel represented the United States in three Summer Olympics. As a 15-year-old at the 1976 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal as a member of the winning U.S. team in the women's 4x100-meter freestyle relay, together with her teammates Kim Peyton, Wendy Boglioli and Shirley Babashoff. After the U.S. women's team had been outshone in nearly every event by their East German rivals, Peyton, Boglioli, Sterkel and Babashoff achieved a moral victory by not only winning the relay gold medal, but also by breaking the East Germans' world record in the event final. Individually, she competed in two other events, finishing seventh in the 100-meter freestyle and not advancing beyond the preliminary heats in the 200-meter freestyle.