Oberlin College Athletics

A four-year standout on the hardwood, Merrill Shanks led the Yeomen in scoring three of his four years with the team.
 
Playing from 1958-1961, Shanks rewrote the Oberlin record books, departing as one of the school's all-time leading scorers at the time of his graduation. He also held the single-game scoring record and his single-game free-throws-made mark of 16 still stands to this day.
 
Shanks' play on the court was to be marveled at, as his efforts helped the Yeomen secure 47 wins during his illustrious career.
 
Once Shanks graduated from Oberlin that didn't mean his basketball playing days were behind him, as he continued to play the game he loved while attending graduate school at the University of Michigan. He and fellow graduate students would take on the freshmen of the varsity team as they were ineligible to play as freshmen at that time.
 
However, Shanks also took his studies very serious at Michigan, ultimately earning a PhD in 1970.

Now retired, Shanks worked as a professor of political science at UC Berkeley, where he also led the Survey Research Center and later the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program and Social Science Computing Laboratory.