GEORGETOWN ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME

By the mid-1920's, basketball at Georgetown was struggling to survive. Player turnover and faculty concerns about the travel schedules had reduced the 1924-25 slate to a mere eight games, with a road trip to Annapolis as the only travel the team would take from archaic Ryan Gym. In need of a big time player, the Hilltoppers found it in Bob Nork.

Nork wasn't the biggest player on the team--in fact, by contemporary photos, he was the smallest, standing somewhere about 5-6. A three sport letterman in football and baseball as well as basketball, Nork was simply tougher than his opponents, and the fact that he played forward against taller opponents mattered not. His expert play helped keep Georgetown basketball competitive during these lean years, and prepared the team for a sterling group that followed.

Playing one game as a reserve in 1924-25, Nork joined the team for good the following season. The 1924-25 season proved to be a difficult one, becoming the school's first losing record in its twenty year history. The efforts of Nork were invaluable, though, particularly as the rest of the team struggled in most aspects of the game. Nork scored 12 of his team's 18 points in a win over Lafayette, and 11 of 20 in a loss to Army. His team-leading 135 points over 13 games was six points short of the combined scoring of the rest of the starting five.

By 1927, Nork again led the team in scoring, as the Hilltoppers earned a winning record over nine games. His 85 points over nine games was nearly double that of the scoring runner-up, and he was a big factor in nearly every game played. Elevated to captain in 1928, Nork averaged seven points a game, but under the tutelage of Elmer Ripley and the arrival of the talented class of 1930, the "flying Hoyas" won 12 of 13, a fitting end to Nork's three years of team leadership.

Nork was a talented halfback and had an offer to play with the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles, but turned it down to return home to Shenandoah, PA to teach. Over the next two decades, Nork became one of Pennsylvania's winningest prep coaches, coaching Shenandoah to the unofficial 1932 national high school championship, as well as a state co-championship in 1940.

Bob Nork was posthumously enshrined in the Georgetown University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1984.