athlete in IU history was not actually recruited by IU.
· A long jump gold medalist had such humble beginnings that he grew up in a chicken house.
· The Hoosiers produced the first African American gold medalist in the decathlon.
· A diver who had never before competed on the 10-meter platform won a gold medal a few months after she first tried it.
· The soccer player who helped build the Hoosiers’ dynasty was discovered on Chicago playgrounds.
· A swimmer later became head valet for a Saudi Arabian prince and then a master chef.
· A swimmer was part of rescue missions for astronauts who walked on the moon.
· A double gold medalist won a Silver Star for heroism in the Vietnam War.
· Two distance runners became FBI agents.
Those athletes, in order, are Mark Spitz, Greg Bell, Milt Campbell, Lesley Bush, Angelo DiBernardo, Mike Stamm, Fred Schmidt, Mike Troy, Don Lash, and Fred Wilt.
The event in which the Hoosiers have the most gold medals (ten) is swimming’s 4×100-meter medley relay: Frank McKinney, 1960; Kathy Ellis and Fred Schmidt, 1964; Charlie Hickcox and Don McKenzie, 1968; Mark Spitz and Mark Stamm, 1972; Mark Kerry (Australia), 1980; Lilly King and Cody Miller, 2016. Through 2016, the US men had never lost the 4×100 medley relay at an Olympics.
The Hoosiers also have four gold medalists in track and field’s 4×400-meter relay: Ivan Fuqua, 1936; Roy Cochran, 1948; Sunder Nix, 1984; and David Neville, 2008.
The Hoosiers have earned a medal in every Olympics in which they competed, except 2004. In 1968, Indiana came away with seventeen medals, a total exceeded by only eight countries.
Indiana features 223 total Olympic berths, including athletes, coaches, and judges. Those are led by one hundred in men’s swimming and diving, thirty-nine in men’s track and field, and thirty in women’s swimming and diving.
The twenty-four nations or territories besides the United States that a Hoosier has represented include Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
This book is devoted to athletes, but Indiana has had multiple coaches on US staffs. Those include Bob Knight and Tara VanDerveer in basketball; Billy Hayes and Sam Bell in track and field; Doc Counsilman and Ray Looze in swimming; Hobie Billingsley, Jeff Huber, and Drew Johansen in diving; and Billy Thom and Jim Humphrey in wrestling.
The Hoosiers inevitably will send more athletes to Tokyo for the next Olympic Games, which were postponed from 2020 to 2021 by a pandemic. They will bring more medals back to Bloomington and build on a tradition that few universities can emulate.
Steve Alford, 1985.
IU Archives P0030877.
Steve Alford
1984
America’s Last Amateur Gold
STEVE ALFORD WAS COMING OFF A MOMENTOUS FRESHMAN BASKETBALL season. He averaged 15.5 points a game, scoring 27 in the Indiana Hoosiers’ 72–68 upset of top-ranked North Carolina and Michael Jordan in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16.
Although the Hoosiers didn’t make it to the 1984 Final Four, coach Bob Knight did. He appeared on TV at halftime of one of the games on CBS. Alford was watching at home in New Castle, Indiana, with friends.
Knight looked into the camera and said, “I know Steve’s watching back home. The thing I want him working on all summer is his defense and moving without the ball.”
Alford shook his head. Here was Coach, two thousand miles away, chiding him about his defense. The next week, back in Bloomington, Alford was playing pickup. Those games were strictly for fun because no coaches were watching.
“I’ve got the whole summer to get better,” Alford told Todd Meier, another freshman for the Hoosiers. “And no Coach Knight on my butt!”
Or so everyone thought.
Days later, Alford went to the mailbox at his dormitory, which usually had nothing other than letters from his mother. This time, there was an invitation to be among seventy-three players trying out for the US Olympic team, coached by Knight. That started the Hoosier on a summer in which he would see plenty of his coach . . . and Jordan.
Alford not only made the team, he was fourth in scoring (10.3 points a game) and second in assists for the 8–0 gold medalists. The Los Angeles Olympics were the last played before NBA pros were allowed. Alford is the fourth-youngest gold medalist in Olympic basketball history, at nineteen years, 260 days.
“To be the last amateur team to win gold is pretty special,” he said.
Alford had not expected an invitation to the trials. The only younger players were Delray Brooks, eighteen, the Indiana Mr. Basketball who had committed to IU, and high schooler Danny Manning, seventeen, of Greensboro, North Carolina. Of the twelve players chosen, eleven were selected in the first round of the 1984 or 1985 NBA draft. The twelfth was Alford.
Six invitees went into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame: Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, and John Stockton. And Barkley, Malone, and Stockton did not make the Olympic team.
“Back then, when it was strictly amateur, no pros, you really had to hit it right,” Alford said. “You almost had to hit the Olympics when you were a junior or senior in college. I was very fortunate I got invited.”
He was a gym rat with a chance to play against some of the best players in the sport. That was going to be enough. Making the team was out of the question.
Trials began April 17. They were held at the IU Fieldhouse, across the street from Assembly Hall. Players were assigned to teams on each of eight courts with a simple instruction: play. Knight watched from a scaffold as a football coach would do.
Knight assembled a staff of nineteen college coaches to conduct three-a-day workouts and coach the games. There was a seven-player selection committee, although it was widely assumed Knight would have the final say.
In addition to the fact Alford played without burden of expectation, he found he had two other advantages: he knew Knight’s motion offense and thus did not move tentatively, and he was in the best shape of his life. The workouts, drills, and scrimmages were as much a test of stamina as skill. He grew more confident after shooting seven of seven in his first scrimmage, and three of five in the second.
Alford was trying to study for final exams but found himself writing down names of players he would have to beat out to make the team. Also trying to guess those making the first cut were
