Ralph Hutchinson

Born in Elmira, New York, Hutchinson played varsity football and baseball and ran track at Princeton University.^[1] In football, he was a quarterback and later played the position as a player-coach for the Greensburg Athletic Association, an early professional football team out of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in 1900.^[2]

Hutchinson also played minor league baseball. He played for the 1902 Flandreau Indians of the Iowa-South Dakota League. There, his manager was Art Hillebrand, who played college football with Hutchinson at Princeton and was later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.^[3][4]

Hutchison was the third head football coach at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, serving for one season, in the 1901.^[5][6][7]

From 1903 to 1905, Hutchinson coached at Texas, where he compiled a 16–7–2 record.

Hutchinson was the first basketball coach at the University of New Mexico, compiling a 32–8 record from 1910 to 1917. New Mexico played games only sporadically before the 1920s, with no regular schedule.

Hutchinson was hired in August 1918 as head coach at Washington & Jefferson, south of Pittsburgh.^[8]

Hutchinson was the head football coach at the University of Idaho for the 1919 season. A "shorter than normal" season, his team posted a 2–3 record. He also coached the basketball team for the 1919–20 season.

In 1920, Hutchinson moved south to the Idaho Technical Institute in Pocatello. He coached through the 1927 season, tallying a 25–22–2 (.531) record at the two-year school, which was renamed the "University of Idaho–Southern Branch" in 1927. It was renamed "Idaho State College" in 1947 after gaining four-year status and became Idaho State University in 1963.

On November 4, 1922, the Idaho Tech football team played its first game on Hutchinson Field, named in his honor.^[9][10] The field was used until partway through the 1936 season, when football games moved to the "Spud Bowl".^[11][12] The former Hutchinson Field area continues to be known as the Hutchinson Memorial Quadrangle.^[13]

After eight years in Pocatello, Hutchinson returned to the University of Idaho in Moscow in 1928, where he was the athletic director for a year, as well as the head track coach and an assistant football coach.^[14] After the hiring of Leo Calland in 1929, Hutchinson was the athletic trainer and a professor of physical education,^[1] and the head coach of minor sports.^[15] Following a brief illness, he died at the age of 57 on March 30, 1935, of a heart attack at his Moscow home.^[16] In 1980, Hutchinson was inducted to Idaho State's athletic hall of fame.^[17]