Hamilton's new athletic director defines success, peers into the future, and reveals the origins of that nickname
Jon Hind '80
Jon Hind '80 returned to Hamilton this summer as the College’s athletic director.While he spent the past two decades in the Midwest — most recently at Butler University, where he was associate athletic director of operations — he has deep ties to Central New York. He is a 1976 graduate of Henninger High School in Syracuse; he played lacrosse and football at Hamilton; and he served as assistant coach in both sports on two different occasions during the 1980s while teaching in Clinton schools.
Hind coached lacrosse and football at the Division III College of Wooster in Ohio from 1986-91, then moved to Division I Butler in Indianapolis in 1991 to found that school’s lacrosse program. Despite building from scratch, Butler had six winning seasons in his seven years as coach, and Hind was named National Coach of the Year by the U.S. Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association after he guided the Bulldogs to the NCAA Championship tournament in 1998.
He left the sidelines in 1999 to become an athletic administrator, overseeing Butler’s soccer, tennis,men’s lacrosse and women’s volleyball teams, and the sports medicine department; and he served as Butler’s interim athletic director in 2006.
Hind was a four-year letter winner and two-time captain as a defenseman on the Hamilton lacrosse team, and he lettered in football as a sophomore. He earned a master’s degree in athletic administration from Kent State University in 1991. He and his wife, Carol, have two daughters, Kayleigh and Meghan.
