Elwin “Ducky” Drake ’27

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Elwin Drake – known to all his friends as Ducky – is celebrating his 60th anniversary at UCLA this year. He is one of the world’s finest track coaches, the trainer of eight Olympians and a legend. An old friend sums it up: “UCLA has been blessed by having Elwin Drake as part of the institution. All who know him agree that Ducky is an institution himself.”

Drake was a young man of 20 working in Beverly Hills lumber yard when it occurred to him that it would be nice to earn a college degree, though no one in his family ever had. He went to UCLA, where he was fierce about competing in track. After graduation in 1927 with a degree in education, he became assistant track coach, at the same time teaching at a junior high school in the mornings. After 19 years of this “sunlighting,” he gave up his junior high job to become fulltime head track coach at UCLA. From 1947, he was both head coach and trainer.

After his official retirement in 1964 at age 60, he became a consultant trainer for the athletic department, continuing to travel with both the football and basketball teams, still ministering to bent tendons and broken spirits. It’s been said that Drake has meant more to the UCLA program since his retirement than most coaches or trainers could hope to mean in a lifetime. In the minds of many athletes, he came to symbolize UCLA. The late J.D. Morgan called Drake “the guts of the program.”

Along the way, Drake was honored as “coach of the Year” in 1956, the year that he led the track and field team to win UCLA’s first NCAA and Pacific Coast championships. He was named to the Athletic Trainers’ Hall of Fame in 1964 and to the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 1984 and received the Alumni Association’s Award for University Service. Drake Track and Field Stadium was named in his honor in 1973. Some say that legend of Drake will outlast the stadium.

Drake has represented three different nations in the Olympic Games: in 1932, in Los Angeles, when his U.S. pole vaulter took third place; in the 1948 London games, where he coached a Panamanian sprinter who was a student at UCLA; in 1956, at Melbourne, where he trained the American track team; and in 1960, at the Rome games, when he coached both Rafer Johnson, for the United States, and C.K. Yang for the Republic of China (Taiwan).

At the Rome games, Johnson and Yang, both UCLA athletes, ended up as gold and silver medal winners in the decathlon – their first and second place finish unprecedented for any one university in Olympic competition. Thereby hangs a suspenseful and oft-told tale – which of the two would Ducky favor? A writer from Sports Illustrated sat next to him in the stands at Rome for two days and nights, and he still couldn’t figure out who the coach favored. Drake says, “That’s the way it should be. They were both my boys.”

When Drake retired, Johnson, speaking for the thousands of young athletes whom Drake had trained, wrote, “In your years as head coach, you made many men realize that to often we slip through the world contributing nothing, without discovering what we have within us… using only a minute fraction of our abilities or skills. Whether on the field, or in life, we all learned from you that you get out of it only what you give it. Many were surprised by what they found they could do, but you said, ‘I knew you could do it all along.’”

One of Drake’s colleagues says, “The players see Ducky as the personification of the values which they’re told have been important to our country – dedicated hard work, thoughtfulness toward others, loyalty and confidence in personal relationships, being true to one’s word and hard work. There’s no generation gap between this uncommon man and our 20-year-olds. His character is woven into the fabric of the school to give it strength. There’s simply no one like him.”

Drake’s dedication, service and support to UCLA are unsurpassed by anyone. What is striking is the obvious and genuine pride and devotion he holds toward UCLA and how these feelings drive him to perform the outstanding service he has always rendered. But if you tell him he’s indispensable, he will protest, ‘There’s no such thing.’”

Still, Drake’s fame is worldwide. “I travel all over,” says Johnson. “I’ll be Ceylon, India, England… and there’s always someone coming up to me, asking, ‘How’s Ducky?’”