William Neufeld

William Neufeld won the 1924 Olympic Trials javelin throw. He never placed at the AAU or NCAA Meets. Neufeld started in college at Bethel College, in Kansas, where he played on the basketball team, but transferred to U Cal Berkeley after his freshman year.

After college Neufeld worked for SunMaid Raisins in Fresno, California, where he also played semi-pro basketball. In 1925 he moved to Oakland where he started teaching and coaching in high school. In 1926 Neufeld starting coaching at Riverside Junior College. He stayed there through 1936, but left that year, only a year after his wife had died, to become an assistant coach at Harvard.

In 1942 Neufeld joined the Naval Air Service, and was stationed at Annapolis, returning to Harvard in 1946. In the late 1940s he moved to Japan where he worked with Japanese athletes for the State Department, and helped train them for the 1952 Olympics. Neufeld later worked in Germany, Iran, Taiwan, and Africa in his role with the State Department. In 2006 Neufeld was inducted posthumously into the Fresno Athletic Hall of Fame.

Personal Best: JT – 59.97 (196-9) (1924).