Lacking a pool onboard, the team practiced in a canvas tank, swimming with a rope attached.

[13][14] The women's 4x100-meter Olympic relay team that year consisted of Adelaide Lambert, Osipowich, Eleanor Garatti, and Martha Norelius with Josephine McKim and Susan Laird as alternates.

[15][16] At the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Osipowich won a gold medal in the women's 100-meter freestyle in the world record time of 1:11, touching only .4 seconds before the American favorite Eleanor Garatti who swam a 1:11.4.

[13] Osipowich also won a gold medal with the American women's 4×100-meter freestyle relay team that swam a combined time of 4:47.6, another world record.

Though highly recognized for a short period, her elite swimming career did not extend long after her 17th birthday, though she swam competitively at Pembroke, and continued to enter regional meets.

[3] As a Sophomore in March, 1931, at the end of the 1930-31 season, where Pembroke went undefeated in regular season meets, she swam the 60-yard sprint for Pembroke in 40 seconds in a home meet defeating the Radcliffe Women's team, also swimming on winning relay teams.

In 1933, Osipowich graduated from Pembroke College (Brown University) in Providence, Rhode Island, where she played field hockey and continued swimming.

[22] In April, 1930, she comfortably won the 220-yard competition in 2:50.8 at a swimming meet in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, though Joan McSheehy took greater honors, setting records in three events.

[23] Albina's brother John Osipowich was a varsity swimmer for Worcester Tech, and won the preliminary heat of the 440-yard event in a record time of 5:43 at the 1930 Intercollegiate Championships at the Bowdoin Pool.

At the time of her wedding, Osipowich was working as a Director for Rhode Island's activities for women for the National Youth Administration.

Her husband, Harrison Van Aken Jr., had worked for General Electric in Lynchberg but had been transferred to Phoenix, Arizona in February 1963, following a divorce.

[18] The Brown Athletic Hall of Fame includes Albina Osipowich Van Aken '33, who was inducted in 1984.