Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletics

Back in 1925 and 1926, when IUP was the two-year Indiana Normal School. Its mile relay teams traveled across Pennsylvania to run in the even-then fabled Penn Relays at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field.

The races each year were billed as Normal School national-championship events, and the Indians won both time.  The 1925 team set a normal-school national record by running the mile in three minutes.  37 seconds.

Norm King was part of both years’ teams.  Along with John Alexick, Clair Borland and Walter Patterson, all also now deceased.

King also played football for three seasons (1925-27), becoming team captain as coach George Miller launched his 20-year coaching tenure, and ultimately was named to IUP's all-time pre-1960 team as a running back.

After completing his studies in 1927 at INS, which would become Indiana State Teachers College that fall, King earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 1928.

In 1937 he attained a master's degree there and in 1960 was awarded an MBA by Pittsburgh. For seven years (1938-45) King served IUP as a "critic" and supervising teacher of student teachers.  After teaching at Bucknell, from which he had transferred to IUP as a student, he joined the business education faculty at Shippensburg in 1947.

There he became department chairman for many years before retiring in 1970 and was active in the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) legislative arena for 25 years.

King also served as president of the Shippensburg school board for eight years, an elder in the Presbyterian Church and a Kiwanis Club leader.

Married to the former Helene Carroll for 51 years before she passed away in 1982, King was the father of Norma Murdoch, who for a number of years was part of the office staff of Indiana attorneys Holsinger and Clark.

Son-in-law George Murdoch, at first Director of Financial Aid at IUP, served the university as Vice President of Finance and then Vice President of Student Affairs through the 1970s.