Lee Merrill

In high school in West Virginia, Lee Merrill was coached by Ben Schwartzwalder, who later gained fame as the football coach at Syracuse University. Merrill took his talents to Michigan State, graduating from there in 1942. He went on to graduate school at Michigan State, although he pitched two years of semi-pro baseball in 1946 and 1947 and turned down several offers to turn pro. Merrill earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in entomology from Michigan State and, while a grad student, won his only national title, the 1948 AAU Championship. He later became a professor at Rutgers.