Harold McCloud (2005) - Marshall Athletics Hall of Fame

Harold McCloud

Induction:
2005
Class:
1941

A star football, basketball and baseball player from Logan, W.Va., Harold McCloud was convinced to leave his job working in the coal mines to attend Marshall by Cam Henderson, where he focused on basketball after his freshman year in Huntington. As the left wing alongside All-American Jule Rivlin in Henderson’s fast break attack, McCloud helped Marshall to the 1938-39 Buckeye Conference Championship and a 22-5 record. As a senior captain for the 1940-41 squad, he scored a career-high 25 points against West Virginia Wesleyan at Huntington’s Vanity Fair in the final game of his career. For his career, McCloud averaged 11.3 points per game during the pre-shot clock era when the team averaged below 50 points per game.

Upon graduation from Marshall, McCloud joined the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and resumed playing baseball while he was in the service. After the war, at the age of 28, he played a season of Minor League baseball for the West Palm Beach Indians in the Independent Florida International League in 1946, batting .429 and pitching his way to a 5-4 record on the year, and also pitching in the league’s All-Star Game in Havana, Cuba. After retiring as a baseball player McCoud returned to his native Logan County and became president of a mining company. McCloud was inducted into the Marshall Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005.