Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletics

Sam Hoenstine is the first to agree that possibly his most attention-grabbing feat at what was then Indiana State Teachers College came the first time he carried the football in 1935 (after having never played high school football) and he toted it 55 yards for a touchdown.

From that point on, his style as both running back and defensive back and baseball pitcher and outfielder.  Until graduating in science and mathematics in 1938.  As well as everything else he has done, has been one of quiet determination.
His .350 batting average did catch the attention of the Detroit Tigers and he amassed the highest number of points in IUP intramural history.

But that only prefaced four decades of service as a high school coach. World War II veteran of the U. S. Army Air Corps in the Central Pacific, earning a master's degree in public school administration at Penn State, and 30 years as a leading member of the IUP faculty and administration before retiring in 1977.

The latter tenure saw Hoenstine rise from teacher at Keith School (counterpart of the present University School) to Director (including the equivalent of principal) while completing his doctorate in secondary education and administration at the University of Pittsburgh in 1953.

He was also largely responsible for coordinating IUP’s student teaching and placement program. The latter became more comprehensive by the mid-1960s, was identified as Career Services, and Hoenstine was tabbed as its fulltime Director.
Professional activities also found him president of the Middle Atlantic Association for School, College and University Staffing and secretary-treasurer of the Central Western Pennsylvania Education Conference for 15 years.

Coaching first of football, basketball and baseball at home-area Claysburg High School in 1938-41, followed by a year at Armagh (now part of United) of baseball and basketball, continued for five years of basketball at Keith School. Parallel activities in county, amateur and church leagues were numerous.

Always a competitor, Hoenstine played sandlot baseball for a number of years and was perennially regarded as one of the Indiana Country Club’s top golfers.

In the Indiana community he served for many years as a member of Indiana County Handicapped Children’s Society and YMCA boards and as vice president of the church council and Sunday School superintendent at Zion Lutheran. .
He and the former Gladys Black, who he married in 1942, have one son. Sam, a human resources counselor at ALCOA in Pittsburgh following a long tenure with Westinghouse Electric, and a daughter, Dr. Phebe Kerr, an IUP graduate who is Associate Director of Students at Florida Atlantic University.