DON JAMES – Coach (Football)
One of the University of Washington’s all-time great football coaches, Don James’s teams won 153 games from 1975 to 1993. He took the Huskies to seven New Year’s Day bowl games. A member of the National Football College Hall of Fame, he was the nation’s Coach of the Year three times, in 1977, ’84 and ’91 when the Huskies won the national title, finishing 12-0 with a decisive Rose Bowl win over Michigan. From November 1990 to November 1992, James led the Huskies to 22 consecutive wins. Ended a 34-year major college coaching career in 1993.
JACK SIKMA – Basketball
Jack Sikma joined the Seattle SuperSonics as a rookie for the 1977-78 season. That year, Seattle lost to Washington in the NBA Finals but the following season, Sikma was a key reason the Sonics broke through and won their only NBA title. Sikma averaged 15.6 points and 12.4 rebounds per game in the 1978-79 season and was selected to his first of seven NBA All-Star teams. The 6-foot-11 center out of Illinois Wesleyan University finished 7th in NBA most valuable player voting for the 1978-79 season.
Sikma averaged 15.6 points and 9.8 rebounds per game over 15 seasons in the NBA (the final five with Milwaukee). Sikma’s signature move was the reverse-pivot, step-back jumper. He was also an 85% free-throw shooter. His No. 43 was retired by the Sonics and he was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.
JANET HOPPS ADKISSON – Tennis
From her bio for the Seattle University Athletics Hall of Fame:
“There was no women’s tennis team in the 1950s, but that did not stop Janet Hopps from landing a berth on the men’s tennis team. Hopps was the No. 1 player on the team throughout her career. She won the National College Girls’ Tennis Singles Championship (1954-56) and the U.S. Clay Court Doubles Champion in 1955. After graduating magna cum laude, she was a top-10 player nationally, defeating top-ranked Althea Gibson twice in 1958. She returned to Seattle U as the coach of the tennis teams and was named NAIA Coach of the Year five times.”
Hopps-Adkisson was ranked in the top 15 female tennis players three times. She reached the fourth round at Wimbledon in 1959 and 1960. In 1958, at a tournament in Colombia, she beat then-world No. 1 Althea Gibson. Teaming with Bob Mark, Hopps-Adkisson reached the U.S. Open mixed doubles finals in 1959. She was inducted into the ITA Women’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 1999.
