By the 1940s, Hillsdale College athletics were well established in the MIAA, but they were still largely overlooked on the national level. After a two year break for World War II, the football team gained national attention under now legendary coach Frank “Muddy” Waters.
Accepting the head coaching position in 1954, Waters quickly led the “Dales,” as the team was then called, on an amazing 34-game winning streak that stretched from 1954 to 1957. Beginning in ‘55 the Dales fought their way to three undefeated seasons in a row and won an incredible seven consecutive MIAA football championships from 1954 to 1960.
Athletic director Mike Kovalchik described Hillsdale's football success under Waters as a process that put “Hillsdale on the map, so to speak, from a national sense.”
In 1955, All-American Nate Clark scored 24 touchdowns and 144 points to set a school record. Clark “was best known and remembered for his offensive exploits, which included carrying four of five opponents on his back while gaining 15 or 20 yards,” according to the Hillsdale Hall Fame.
In keeping with Hillsdale's long history of academic independence, the 1955 football squad also attracted attention when they turned down an opportunity to compete in the Tangerine Bowl for the NAIA national championship. According to the plaque in the Hall of Fame, Hillsdale “Players voted to refuse [the] offer [to play in the bowl game] when officials insisted that four Hillsdale black players would not be able to play in [the] game.” After three subsequent post-season games, the Dales finally defeated State College of Iowa in the Mineral Water Bowl in 1960, according to a publication by the Hillsdale Athletic department.
Following the 1960 football season, Hillsdale withdrew from the Nation's oldest college athletic conference, the MIAA, even though the school had been heavily involved in founding the league in 1888. In his article, “For the Love of the Game,” Gordon G. Beld explains why: “Hillsdale won the MIAA football championship in 1960 and then defeated Iowa State Teachers College in the Mineral Bowl at Excelsior Springs, Missouri. Since that postseason competition violated league policy, a two-year suspension was imposed by the MIAA President's Council, which also stripped the Dales of their football crown. In response, Hillsdale withdrew from the league.” The team played independently from 1960 to 1973, when it joined the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC).
Along with great team success during the middle part of the twentieth century, the Hillsdale football teams routinely produced outstanding individual players as well. Three of the most recognizable of these athletes are Howard Mudd, ‘64, who was an All-Pro linebacker with the San Francisco 49ers, Chester Marcol, ‘72, who became an All-Pro kicker and punter with the Green Bay Packers, and Bruce McLenna, ‘66, who went on to play running back for the Detroit Lions.
In 1974 a former Hillsdale player, Jack McAvoy, became head football coach and later moved on to become the school's Director of Athletics. One of McAvoy's biggest admirers is Salvatori Professor of History and Traditional Values John Willson who has coached and taught at Hillsdale for thirty years. Willson described McAvoy as “the giant figure in Hillsdale Athletics.” He said that “Jack was a football man: There was football, and then there was every other sport.”
The 1970s ushered in tremendous expansion for Hillsdale athletics, particularly women's sports. Willson said, “We didn't do it [expanded women's athletic opportunities] because Title Nine forced us to do it. We did it because it was the right thing to do. Jack [McAvoy] gets most of the credit for that.”
Willson recalled that in the spring of 1975, a group of girls approached him for help in starting a women's track and cross country team at Hillsdale. Willson said that he volunteered to coach the girls for one year. “Seven years later I gave it up,” he commented with a generous smile.
As the girl's track coach, Willson was responsible for recruiting promising athletes and students as well as coaching. He explained that his initial strategy was to recruit distance runners as he built the team: “Distance runners tend to be good students,” he said. “Running that far is so difficult and so painful that it really takes a lot of discipline.” That discipline, he believes, translates into good grades because the students are willing to work hard in the classroom as well.
One of Willson's most humorous memories from coaching occurred during the girl's 1979 spring break track meet in Indiana. After a very early morning and long, cold day of poor performances by all seven Hillsdale girls, it was a dreary team that piled into the van to head back to Michigan, he explained. Halfway home, however, the girls were having a splendid time, singing and giggling and thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Willson was encouraged because the girls appeared to be so resilient. Ten years later however, one of them explained why the drive home had been the turning point of the trip: “We poured a half-gallon of Vodka into the Gatorade,” she said.
“I had no clue,” Willson laughed, as he recounted the story.
Fortunately, he doesn't like Gatorade.