Basketball and Football
Born in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, Sam Perrin graduated from Huron (S.D.) High School in 1927, having lettered in basketball, football and track.
Entering Carleton in the fall of 1927, he soon was recognized as one of the College’s finest two-sport athletes. Perrin was a three-year starter in both football and basketball in an era when it was out of the ordinary for an underclassman to even win a varsity letter. An end on C.J. Hunt’s strong football teams, it was in basketball where he was to earn his greatest fame. Perrin was a forward on three of Ozzie Cowles’ teams which went undefeated at home and were also undefeated in Midwest Conference play. The 1928-29 team was 12-3, losing only to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Grinnell; the 1929-30 team went 14-2, losing to Wisconsin and Chicago; and the 1930-31 five, which he captained, was 13-3, falling only to Northwestern, Illinois, and Minnesota. Those teams rang up 20 consecutive Sayles-Hill victories and 23 straight Conference wins. Invariably Carleton’s leading scorer, Perrin was named to the All-Midwest team at the end of the 1930 and 1931 seasons.
Following a year of graduate work at the University of Minnesota, Perrin returned to Carleton for the 1932-33 year to be freshman coach and a laboratory assistant in biology, his undergraduate major. The following year, he accepted an appointment as football, basketball and track coach at Shattuck School in Faribault.