Track Coach for 35 Years
Harry Hillman Still Going Strong at Dartmouth
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO THIS WINTER, a young man working in one of the New York Stock Exchange houses was asked to come to Dartmouth to coach track. He had an imposing record of competitive track athletics behind him and a string of world records almost as long as the pair of legs which had propelled him over the cinder paths of two continents faster than anyone had ever run before. He had never been to Hanover and was not exactly sure where it was, although he had heard a great deal about Dartmouth athletics during his own competitive career. But he decided to give the new job a try and took the train for the North Country. He landed on Hanover Plain in the middle of winter. He is still here.
In his 35 years with the College, Harry Hillman has seen more than eight college generations come and go. He has coached intercollegiate champions galore, has prepared more than one Dartmouth track man for the Olympic Games, and has seen one of his boys crowned world champion. He has also had his lean years (and this is one of them), when Dartmouth has been near the end of the procession in the indoor and outdoor intercollegiates and has been hard put to it to win any dual meets. But through all those years, Harry has been doing his best, often with undistinguished material. Far and away the old est coach in the College in point of active service, Harry is also one of its finest gentlemen and sportsmen.
There is one coaching experience that Harry enjoys more than any of the others. That is to take a boy who has never run, jumped, or thrown a heavy object before he came to college and develop him into a good or maybe even a great track man. Every year in peacetime and wartime alike a motley assortment of gangling or pudgy youngsters come out for track, boys who never did anything more athletic in high school than play ping pong or go to the Junior Prom. These aspiring freshmen are never summarily advised that they had better devote their athletic talents, if any, to the Business Board of The Dartmouth or the technical staff of the Players. Rather are they encouraged to come out and try to do the thing for which they seem best suited. The varied character of track athletics is such that many different types of ability and physique can be utilized. Youngsters who. look so frail that they might collapse at the end of fifty yards may develop into cross-country runners capable of pounding endlessly up and down hills without even drawing a deep breath. Others who look too fat or muscle-bound to tie their own shoes may have just the proper coordination to become javelin throwers and shot putters. The chances of any given boy becoming a champion in any of these events are, to say the least, problematical. But miracles sometimes happen. And Harry is the man to make them happen if anyone can.
Harry has had two careers in track athletics one as a performer and the other, longer in time but not less glorious, as a coach. He competed on three different Olympic teams, in 1904 at St. Louis, in 1906 (they had them oftener in those years) at Athens, and in 1908 at London. The high point in his competitive career was in the St. Louis Olympics, when Harry won three events: the 400-meter flat, the 400-meter hurdles, and the 200-meter low hurdles, in each of which he set a world record. Triple Olympians have been few and far between in the history of the modern games. Harry Hillman is one of the few men who have that distinction.
In the field of coaching he has done all right too. A good many track champions have worn the Green during his 35 years in Hanover. Here is a partial list of some of the intercollegiate champions Harry has turned out: Bud Whitney '15, Mark Wright '13, and Laddie Myers '20 in the pole vault; Russ Palmer '10, Roy Brown '23, and Tom Maynard '29 in the high jump; Jake Shelburne '19 and Tony Geniawicz '37 in the shot; Mel Metcalf '32 in the javelin; and Don Burnham '44 in the mile. But it has been in Harry's own first love, the hurdles, that he has really turned out the intercollegiate champions: Gus Graun '15 in the high hurdles, Monty Wells '28 in the high hurdles, Jack Donovan '38 in both the highs and the lows, and finally, the greatest of them all, Earl Thomson '22 in both low and high hurdles and Olympic Champion in the latter. Speaking of Hillman-coached Olympians, a goodly number have changed the Dartmouth Green for the Red, White, and Blue emblems on their jerseys Bud Whitney, Mark Wright, Laddie Myers, Jake Enright, Roy Brown, Harry Worthington, Mel Metcalf, and finally Earl Thomson. In a peaceful world, there is not much question that the newest of the Green track stars, Don Burnham '44, would have been added to the list of Dartmouth's Olympians in the mile run. Character building is fun. But it's also fun to watch your boys hitting the tape first. Harry has done a lot of both.
From the opening of college in the fall (in those days when it did open in the fall) until the cross-country team runs its last shivering race in the snow, and from the first faint signs of melting snow on the track in the spring until the team goes to the intercollegiates the last weekend in May (and all summer long nowadays) under all weather conditions, rain or shine, hot or cold, still or windy Harry Hillman stands at the north end of the outdoor track in his leather jacket and his old baseball cap, telling the boys to use their arms, keep their knees up and finish hard. He has seen the misty outlines of Mount Ascutney loom up beyond the south end of the stadium on many thousands of afternoons, as the sun and the wind have added a few more wrinkles to the corners of his eyes and a few more layers of tan to his cheeks. We hope he can be out there for many thousand more afternoons.
