Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 1990
- Class:
- 1922
A native of Peculiar, Missouri, Hamilton lettered in track and field at MU in 1920-21-22, captaining the team in 1922. He also played football, and in 1921 caught two touchdown passes in a Homecoming win over Oklahoma and wound up on the second string of the Walter Camp all-America team. In 1923, he played on the Kansas City Athletic Club basketball team that won the National AAU Championship. A world-class performer in the pentathlon and decathlon, he won the national championship in both events in 1920. At the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, he won the silver medal in the decathlon, losing out on the gold by just four points. He was fifth in the pentathlon. He placed seventh in the pentathlon at the 1924 Summer Olympics. He began his coaching career at Westminster College, winning conference championships from 1926-29. In 1930, he moved to the University of Kansas and his teams won the Big Six Conference title in 1930 and ’31. One of his proteges at KU was the famous American miler, Glenn Cunningham. Following the 1932 Olympics, where he was the USA decathlon coach, he went on to coach the track team at the University of California in Berkeley, coaching there until he retired in 1965. He was the coach of the U.S. Olympic track and field team in the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland. He served as Cal’s athletic director from 1946-55 and hired two of Cal’s greatest coaches – Lynn (Pappy) Waldorf in football and Pete Newell in basketball. Hamilton was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1956, and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974.
