IUP Athletic Hall of Fame
Of this year’s 14 inductees to its Athletic Hall of Fame. Only one did not graduate from IUP. It's safe to say, though, that Sam Smith, a 1930 Waynesburg College chemistry alumnus who held a master 's degree as well as credits toward a doctorate from the university of Pittsburgh, that no inductee had greater direct influence on more IUP graduates than he did.
Football and baseball coach from 1949 through 1962, he was also athletic director for what was then Indiana State Teachers College and later Indiana State College from 1951 through '64. Smith's predecessor as AD was George Miller, and he was succeeded by Chuck Klausing.
Prior to coming to the university, he had coached all sports at Dormont High School, now part of the Keystone Oaks system just South of Pittsburgh , winning two WPIAL football championships there.
As football coach at IUP for 13 years, he fielded eight teams that posted winning or .500 records. Current Indian coach and athletic director Frank Cignetti played for Smith.
1996 Hall of Fame inductee Owen Dougherty was his first assistant in both football and baseball, and it was under his direction that the first black student-athletes enrolled at IUP.
In baseball, the Indians were always a force, and in 1960 won the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and NAIA area championships to advance to the small college "World Series” in Saint Joseph, Missouri. He was NAIA district chairman for the sport.
As if these involvements weren’t enough. Smith also directed the college's intramural program for many years and was part of the health and physical education teaching faculty, from which he retired in 1971 and was appointed a professor emeritus.
Smith through the years became a legend to literally thousands of IUP graduates, known not only for his genuine and dedicated personality and character but respected for many of the foundations he set that have paved the way for a great deal of IUP's present athletic tradition and success.
In 1981. Smith was bestowed with two significant honors - inducted into the Western Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame and a special outstanding service award from the Tri-State Athletic Directors Association, based in Pittsburgh. He was also a 35-year member of the American football Coaches Association, and in 1984 the NCAA commemorated his memory with a special memorial.
Smith and wife, Madge, retired as an Indiana Area High School teacher, are the parents of son Furmun, a Carnegie Mellon graduate now an environmental engineering consultant with Eli Lilly in Indianapolis and daughter Susan, a Pitt grad now administrator of the United Way at the University of Virginia after working with TRW and the National Security Agency in Washington, DC. They also raised an adopted niece, Cynthia Sexton, now in Illinois.
