Hampton Athletics Hall of Fame
Sylvius S. Moore, Sr. was a member of the Hampton Institute football team that won the CIAA title in 1931, but that was merely the beginning for him. Moore also won CIAA middleweight wrestling titles in 1934 and 1935. After graduating, he got into coaching – among the sports he coached were football, basketball, tennis, wrestling, and most notably, swimming.
In addition, he served as Hampton’s director of athletics in the 1970s. Moore served as swimming coach at Hampton from 1943-85, and he co-founded the CIAA’s competitive swimming program along with John H. Burr of Howard University. Moore coached Hampton to seven CIAA swimming championships. When combining individual and team titles, he oversaw more than 40 championship efforts and he coached more than 1,000 collegiate swimmers, including Gail Bond and Arthur Armstrong, the first African-American age group swimmers to break a Virginia state record.
While serving as Hampton’s head swimming coach and as a physical educator instructor, Moore helped to design the pool at Holland Hall, he served on the staff of the National Aquatic School’s Camp Pequod in Colchester, Conn., he started an integrated summer Learn to Swim Program on the HU campus in the 1950’s, and he founded the Hampton Aquatic Club, the first integrated AAU age-group swim team in Virginia in the 1960s.
In 1969, Moore created a women’s competitive swimming program which competed in meets around the region. Meanwhile, he was elected one of four vice-presidents of the Virginia State Amateur Athletic Union in 1975. In 1977, the Sylvius S. Moore Invitational Swim Meet was created to celebrate his 50-plus years in aquatics.
As a professor, Moore received the coveted Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award in 1969. On Founder’s Day in 1985, he received the President’s Citizenship Award in recognition of outstanding service to the University and the community. Also in 1985, the Board of Trustees at Hampton appointed Moore Professor Emeritus of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.
Moore is a member of the Swimming Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C.
