Occidental College

Don Gambril '56 enrolled at Oxy as a sophomore after developing an interest in swimming at East Los Angeles Junior College. After completing his undergraduate studies at Cal State LA, he found his calling as a swimming coach at the college level, with successful stints at Long Beach State (1967-71), Harvard University (1971-73), and most notably the University of Alabama (1973 until his retirement in 1990). He worked with the U.S. Olympic swim team as an assistant coach in 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1980, and served as head coach of the 1984 squad in Los Angeles. His teams won five national titles and 16 league championships, while his Olympic swimmers (a group that includes Mark Spitz, Sharon Stouder, and Gunnar Larsson of Sweden) won 14 gold medals and broke 20 world records. Gambril was an inaugural nominee into the Oxy Aquatics Hall of Fame in 1996, a 1983 inductee into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and received the USA Swimming Award that same year.