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the money he needed. His ambition to be a doctor became a memory as he rose toward the top of the heavyweight rankings. He won a decision over former champ Max Schmeling that helped make him the No. 1 challenger to champion Max Baer in 1934. When Hamas's manager ran into some resistance scheduling a title bout with Baer, he convinced Hamas to meet Schmeling in a rematch in Hamburg, Germany. While training for the fight, he tore a tendon in his left elbow, but his manager refused to postpone the Schmeling bout, and the German beat up Hamas so severely that he wound up in the hospital for 10 days. A short time later, Hamas retired, finishing with a record of 34 wins (27 by knockout), four defeats (one by knockout) and four draws. There is a postscript to this story that may be familiar to readers. Hamas's loss to Schmeling gave lightly regarded journeyman James Braddock a shot at Baer and the crown. This was the scenario in the popular 2005 movie about Braddock entitled "Cinderella Man" featuring Russell Crowe as Braddock. Braddock lost but was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2001 while Hamas slipped into oblivion, spending most of his quiet life as a salesman In New Jersey. Two of Penn State's other champion boxers became famous outside of professional boxing. In 1929, sophomore Julius Epstein won the bantamweight national championship. A few years later, he and his identical twin brother Philip, who also graduated from Penn State, were writing screenplays for movies. In 1942, they hit the jackpot with one of the most memorable movies of all time, "Casablanca. " Chuck Drazenovich was an outstanding heavyweight in the late 1940s as well as a standout on the unbeaten Cotton Bowl football team of 1947. In 1950, his senior year, he won the NCAA heavyweight championship. He went on to have an outstanding pro football career as a linebacker with the Washington Redskins, and on the franchise's 70th anniversary in 2002, he was selected to the 70 Greatest Redskins team. Hamas is one of Penn State's most overlooked outstanding athletes. The 12 letters he earned in five sports – boxing, football, basketball, track and lacrosse – remain a school record. Paterno Pattee Library Archives However, the most legendary of all Penn State boxing figures is Leo Houck, the coach from 1924 until his death in January 1950. Houck didn't create varsity boxing at Penn State, but he nurtured it and brought it to national prominence. (It was Dick Harlow, a former football player turned assistant coach, who got boxing started during the 1912-14 era as an interclass program aimed at improving the physical training of the student body. Harlow and the supervisor of the athletic department, graduate manager Neil Fleming, turned it into a varsity sport in 1919.) Other colleges also had developed intramural boxing programs, and with Penn, Navy, MIT and Penn State leading the movement, an organization known as the Intercollegiate Boxing Association was formed and formally sanctioned by the NCAA in 1921. It was basically an Eastern group because few colleges outside the region had varsity programs. There was competition between member schools until 1924 when the IBA held its first tournament. From that point until the NCAA tournament began in 1932, these were considered the national championships for individuals and teams. Penn State had the distinction of playing host to the inaugural 1924 tournament in the Amory (located about where Willard Building is today), and three other schools participated: Penn, Navy and Syracuse. Eight years later, Penn State's Rec Hall was the site of the first NCAA tournament. By this time, boxing had grown exponentially, and 66 boxers from 31 colleges were there. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that Penn State won that first IBA team title with four individual champions and then captured the first NCAA team crown in 1932 with three individual champs. The IBA didn't disappear. In 1933, it was reconstituted as the Eastern Intercollegiate Boxing Association. Through the coaching of Houck, the Nittany Lions had developed into one of the elite teams in collegiate boxing, and their success continued into the early 1950s as excited students and others jammed Rec Hall. "The popularity of boxing cannot be denied, proclaimed the semi-weekly stu" dent newspaper in March 1933 when the first EIBA tournament took place in Rec Hall. "Few sports are more colorful than the ring game. … It is man against man, skill against skill, something primitive in its attraction, and at the same time an art." Houck produced 12 individual IBA or NCAA national champions and 41 EIBA individual champions. He won five IBA/NCAA national team titles and 18 EIBA team titles. Under his successor, Eddie Sulkowski, Penn Stated added two more NCAA individual champions. Houck had been a professional boxer himself from 1904-28. Although he never won a world title during his 24 years in the ring, he fought 12 world champions in several weight classes, from welterweights to heavyweights, including two battles against future champion Gene Tunney in 1920. He won 158 fights (21 by

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