| Overall UK Wins: 16 | Overall UK Losses: 11 | Win % 59.2 |
Date of Birth: July 11, 1878
Date of Death: January 24, 1948
Hometown: Georgetown, KY
Alma Mater: Georgetown College [1898]

For a generalized listing of officials, please consult this page.

Obituary - Lexington Herald (January 25, 1948)

Robert Hinton Was One of Best Loved Sports Figures in State

by Billy Thompson

GEORGETOWN, Ky., Jan. 24 - Robert Taylor Hinton, dean of Georgetown College and president of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, who died today at a Lexington hospital, was one of Kentucky's best loved sports figures.

Dean Hinton believed in but one thing: Play fair and square or don't play. He enrolled at Georgetown College in 1894.

While at the local college, he starred in football and baseball, being elected captain of the football team three years and captained the baseball team two seasons.

Upon graduation from Georgetown in 1898, Hinton attended Yale University and returned to his alma mater as coach in 1906.

While at Yale he was champion gymnast of the United State and held the pole vault record of the world for a short time. He was the first athlete to pole vault 11 feet.

In 1902 he won international acclaim by copping the world's championship in tumbling and performing on the horizontal bar.

His first year as head basketball coach here proved highly successful - as did the majority of his years. His cage club toppled the University of Kentucky Wildcats, 54 to 4, to register one of the worst lickings a Kentucky basketball team ever suffered.

He continued coaching at Georgetown until the war interrupted his career, served with the YMCA as business manager with the armed forces during World War I and and coached basketball in Europe. One of his prize performers in England was Ed Diddle, currently one of the nation's top coaches at Western Kentucky.

Hinton still is regarded as one of the best track coaches the nation has ever known. He won the SIAA championship with regularity and his harriers won the Kentucky championship five years in a row.

His popularity was not limited to the Georgetown College campus. His Georgetown team was playing Centre for the state basketball championship about 1913 and the score was tied 29-29 with just a few seconds remaining. A Georgetown player fouled one of the Centre cagers and as the opponent shot and missed his foul the stands screamed. Coach Hinton walked onto the floor, hand upraised and told the referee to permit the Centre player to shoot another foul "because the crowd was unsportsmanlike." The Centre player shot another and it cost Georgetown the ball game and the state title, 30 to 29.

Georgetown was scheduled to play Centre again tonight, but the game was postponed because of Dean Hinton's death.

Hinton was elected secretary of the SIAA in 1920, a position he held for 25 years until he was elected to succeed Dr. J.A. Provine, former president of Mississippi College, as head of the association.

In December 1940, Dean Hinton was awarded the largest "G" ever given at Georgetown College by the Monogram Club. The "G" was placed on a blanke surrounded by 17 stars, symbolic of the 17 years he served as coach at the school.

Hinton Field on the Georgetown College campus was named in his honor. Kentucky will miss Robert T. HInton.

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