Chadron State College Athletics

A native of Chadron, Hampton grew up with a ball in his hands, often on the Chadron State campus. He attended Chadron Prep, where he was the quarterback on the football team and a three-year starter on basketball teams that chalked up a 70-4 record, including a 26-0 mark in 1951-52, when the Junior Eagles won the Class C state championship.  He earned all-state honors as a senior in 1953-54.
Hampton played basketball four years and was a three-year starter at Chadron State. He was the Eagles’ leading scorer as both a junior and a senior with averages of 14.8 and 16.3 points, respectively, and was the leading free throw shooter on those teams. He concluded his career with 1,043 points and would have had many more if the 3-point arc had been in place. He was named to the Nebraska College Conference all-star team his senior year in 1957-58.
Hampton earned a Ph.D. in physical/inorganic chemistry from Michigan State University, and worked for Dow Corning from 1963 through 1997, when he retired.
In 1985, he was promoted to business quality consultant, a position the corporation said was created “to recognize outstanding and sustained achievement in the application of technology and quality assurance techniques.”
Now a resident of Northport, Mich., Hampton has never quit being an athlete. While studying at Michigan State, he played on two basketball teams that beat out more than 170 other teams for the intramural championship. During the 1990s, he was inducted into the Michigan Touch Football Hall of Fame and he was still playing 3-on-3 basketball  and shooting 50 free throws daily when he was 70. He often made at least 45 of the charity shots. Twice he won the free throw championship at the Michigan Senior Olympics in the over 60 age group.