Hall of Honor
Coming to campus with impressive credentials as an all-Wisconsin guard on the 1913 Janesville High School state championship basketball team and as an excellent football player, “Ray” Elder was a hardcourt and gridiron standout during his two years at Beloit. He was a daring broken-field runner, a sure tackler and a defensive stalwart who paced the football team to two successive 5-2 seasons and who earned all-state honors as a halfback in 1914. As a basketball guard and center, Elder was noted for his high scoring, clever ball handling, good defense and superb passing, sparking the 1914 squad to the Little Five title. He later played at the University of Wisconsin and captained the Janesville Lakota Cardinals professional basketball team. After service a a U.S. Army flying instructor in England during World War I, he first was athletic director at Kenosha High School and then head basketball coach and football assistant at Northwestern University. Elder left athletics in the mid-20’s to join his father in the tobacco processing business in Chippewa Falls, where he died of a heart attack in 1936 at the age of 44.
