Hec Edmundson

Clarence Sinclair "Hec" Edmundson (August 3, 1886 – August 6, 1964) was an American basketball and track coach.

A native of Moscow, Idaho, and a 1910 graduate of the University of Idaho, Edmundson coached at his alma mater (1916–18) and the University of Washington (1920–47), compiling a 508–204 (.713) overall record in 29 seasons.

Edmundson also coached the track teams and served on the NCAA Basketball Committee from 1941 to 1946. The University of Washington hosted the national basketball finals in 1949 and 1952 in the arena that bears his name.

Edmundson gained his nickname from his mother: as a child, he often muttered, "Oh, heck."

One of the first great athletes at the fledgling University of Idaho in Moscow, Edmundson competed in track for his hometown university and launched the team onto the national stage when he and two other athletes traveled to the Lewis and Clark Exposition Games against the top schools in the Northwest. While still in high school at the UI prep school, he lowered the Northwest record for the half-mile in June 1905.

Newspapers wrote that Edmundson was "impressed with his graceful form and unfaltering determination." He is responsible for organizing the Idaho cross country team in 1908, which set the foundation for a team that would win nine Pacific Coast Conference titles. In 1908, Edmundson traveled to Stanford for the western U.S. Olympic trials, where he won the 800 meters and finished second in the 400 meters, but did not make the Olympic team. He later held the title of top half-miler in the country through 1912. Edmundson became the first Idahoan to compete in the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912. He finished seventh in the 800 meters and sixth in the 400 meters.

Edmundson attended the UI prep school and was a charter member of the new chapter of Kappa Sigma fraternity as an undergraduate. He earned a bachelor's degree in agriculture from Idaho in 1910, and then taught and coached at the high school level, one year each at Coeur d'Alene and Broadway High School in Seattle. He returned to Moscow to coach the UI track team in 1913.

After several seasons as track coach at Idaho, he left after a salary dispute and coached at Whitman College in nearby Walla Walla for a season. He returned to Idaho as both track and basketball coach in 1916, and his basketball teams compiled a 20–9 record in two seasons. It was these basketball teams which were the first UI teams referred to as the Vandals; the nickname was eventually applied to all of the university's athletic teams by the early 1920s.