Robert Tait McKenzie was born on May 26, 1867 in Almonte, Ontario, Canada. James Naismith, the creator of basketball, was also born in Almonte in 1861, and the two were childhood friends and later colleagues. Like Naismith, McKenzie attended McGill University in Montreal, receiving an A.B. in 1889 and an M.D. in 1892, and from 1895-1904, McKenzie worked at McGill as the medical director of physical training and demonstrator of anatomy. In 1904, McKenzie became the director of physical education at the University of Pennsylvania and was later appointed professor of physical therapy on the medical faculty at the University. During World War I, McKenzie became a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and he worked in the fields of rehabilitation and physical medicine in England. He retired as director of physical education at Pennsylvania in 1931 but continued to hold a research professorship until 1937. McKenzie died in Philadelphia on April 28, 1938.

While visiting his friend James Naismith at the International YMCA Training School (now Springfield College), McKenzie was urged by Luther H. Gulick to come there to teach, but as McKenzie states in his own Reminiscences of James Naismith, he “could not leave [his] growing medical practice in Montreal.” Because of their mutual interest in physical education, McKenzie and Gulick remained colleagues and served in many physical education organizations together. McKenzie was awarded an honorary degree, Master of Physical Education, by the College in 1913.

Although best known in the United States as a physical educator, McKenzie won his greatest distinction abroad not in his profession but in his art. His first venture into sculpture was the masks he modeled for his anatomy classes at McGill; and when, in 1902, he had sought in vain an accurate statuette of a runner crouched for the start of a race, he made one himself. Of his more than two hundred statues and memorials, most were of athletes or of World War I figures. Besides war memorials in the Parliament Buildings at Ottawa, at Edinburgh, and at Cambridge University, McKenzie's best-known works include his "Youthful Franklin" (1914) and "The Reverend George Whitefield" (1919), both on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania; "Alma Mater" (1932) at Girard College, Philadelphia; and "General Wolfe" (1930) in Greenwich Royal Park, London, England.

Springfield College owns several bronze sculptures by McKenzie, including “The Competitor” (1906), “The Relay Runner” (1910), “The Joy of Effort” (1912), “The Boy Scout” (1914), and “The Plunger” (1925). Additionally, the college owns three medals designed and created by McKenzie. These include “The Luther Halsey Gulick Memorial Medal” (1923), “The Shield of Athletes” (originally “The Olympic Buckler,” 1932), and “The Three Punters” (1932-1933). Three-inch bronze replicas of McKenzie’s “Joy of Effort” are given to the recipients of the College’s Tarbell Medallion, first awarded in 1935. In 2008, Springfield College hosted an exhibition of McKenzie’s work, entitled “R. Tait McKenzie (1867-1938): Foremost Sculptor of Sport Art.”