Tom Maentz
American football player
Thomas Scott Maentz (October 20, 1934 – December 22, 2025) was an American football player and businessman. He played college football as an end for the Michigan Wolverines from 1954 to 1956. Maentz played on offense and defense and also served as the punter for the Michigan football team. Maentz and Ron Kramer became known as Michigan's "touchdown twins" and were the first University of Michigan athletes to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Maentz won first-team All-Big Ten and second-team All-American honors in 1955 and was elected captain of the 1956 Michigan team. He was inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor in 1994 and in 2019 was the inaugural recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Lifetime Impact Award.
Early life
Maentz was born in Holland, Michigan, on October 20, 1934, where he was raised. His father Henry S. Maentz was the president of the First National Bank of Holland and a Holland community leader.
He attended Holland High School, where he was a standout athlete. After graduating from Holland High School in 1952, Maentz attended The Kiski School, a preparatory boarding school in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7816680. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2025, 1954 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tom Maentz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.