Chances are you do not know the name Alan Helffrich.
His name was littered across headlines and clippings of The Daily Collegian in the 1920s.
But there’s no record of his greatest accomplishment – at least by today’s standards – in the summer editions of the paper in 1924.
Then again, information took weeks, not milliseconds, to travel across the world.
In 1924, Helffrich became the first Penn Stater to win a gold medal at an Olympics.
Or, well, receive a gold medal.
For his efforts as the anchor of the 4×400-meter relay in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Helffrich became the first Penn State student-athlete to truly win a gold medal at the Olympics. Four years prior, Lawrence Shields was a part of the 3000-meter race team that won a gold medal but Shields himself never got a medal because he did not score high enough to help the team win the medal.
So that’s why it’s fair to say – or maybe debate – that Helffrich, not Shields, is the first Penn State athlete to win a gold medal.
Fast forward 102 years, and Penn State has a gold medal-winning athlete in a winter sport.
On Thursday, Penn State’s Tessa Janecke became the first Penn State student-athlete to win a gold medal at any Winter Olympics as the U.S. women’s hockey team beat Canada, 2-1, in overtime¹.
While 102 years from now, her name may go by the wayside the same way Helffrich’s name has been mostly lost due to time and a lack of omnipresent student journalism at his time, there’s something to be said about Penn State’s first gold medalist in a winter games.
It’s a massive moment for Penn State’s first truly great hockey player – and there’s still more to come.
While much of the spotlight has been on Penn State’s men’s program – even since its inception – Penn State women’s ice hockey team has mostly quietly operated in the background.
But Janecke has helped turn the program into something that warrants attention – and maybe even more attention than it’s gotten over the last few seasons.
Every year that she’s been on the roster, Penn State has won the CHA/AHA regular-season title. It’s reached back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and will likely host a regional for the first time ever this season should it win another AHA postseason championship over the next few weeks.
All the while, Janecke has led Penn State. As a freshman, she won the USCHO’s Co-Rookie of the Year with 47 points. She then won back-to-back AHA player of the year awards in her sophomore and junior seasons, recording 53 points each year.
Her 193 points (and counting) make her the highest-scoring Nittany Lion in men’s or women’s program history.
That play, along with scoring the IIHF World Championship winning goal in 2025, put her on the U.S. women’s team for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. There, Janecke helped the Americans with five assists in the undefeated tournament run. Janecke saw crucial minutes on the power play over the two weeks and helped win a faceoff that set up Hilary Knight’s game-tying goal with just over two minutes left in the third. Janecke was then on the ice when Megan Keller scored the overtime winner to beat Canada, in part set up by a forecheck by Janecke where the U.S. recovered possession of the puck.
That resume will help keep her name fresh in the minds of Penn Staters. The reward of gold will keep it in place forever. Anything that comes after will only enhance it.
In Penn State’s corner of the hockey world, Casey Bailey will forever be Penn State’s first NHL player. Gavin McKenna will likely be Penn State’s first No. 1 overall NHL draft pick and Jackson Smith will always be Penn State’s first first-round NHL draftee. Certainly, Aiden Fink, JJ Wiebusch and Matt DiMarsico – among a host of others – will always be the first players who willed Penn State to a men’s Frozen Four. Along the way, another player or two may win a gold medal or even a Stanley Cup.
But eventually, unlike those names, Janecke’s will stick around more permanently, or at least at the beginning of an exclusive list. Regardless of what comes in the weeks following Thursday, she will not just always be “Olympic Hockey Gold Medalist Tessa Janecke” just like she will not just always be “Penn Stater Tessa Janecke.” She will be the one who put those two descriptors together first.
And at least this time, The Daily Collegian covered it.
¹Much like Helffrich and Shields, Janecke’s distinction as the first Winter Olympian will have an interesting predecessor attached to it. In 1956, Kurt Oppelt won gold in pairs figure skating for Austria. He later taught ice skating at Penn State from 1967 to 1976. And just like Janecke, Oppelt won that medal in Italy.
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