Bill Hayward

William Louis Hayward, known as Colonel Bill, was born in Detroit on July 2, 1868 and died on December 14, 1947. His parents were Canadian and he grew up in Toronto, where he became an all-around athlete who excelled at ice hockey, rowing, wrestling and boxing, played lacrosse for one of the Ottawa Capitals teams that won world championships in the 1890s, and ranked among Canada's fastest sprinters over distances from 75 to 600 yards. He then turned to coaching, working at Princeton, the University of California, Pacific University and Albany College before the University of Oregon made him its first permanent track coach in 1904. Over 44 years at Oregon he coached four world record holders, six American record holders and nine Olympians, also served as the football team's trainer and coached basketball, and was a coach for six United States Olympic teams. Hayward Field was named in his honor in 1919, and he was an inaugural inductee of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1980.