 Ingwersen played football, basketball, and baseball at the University of Illinois and was an assistant football coach at the school in two stints totaling 25 seasons.He also served as an assistant football coach at Northwestern University and was the head baseball coach there from 1936 to 1939, tallying a mark of 35–51–1.Ingwersen was born in Bryant, Iowa, a suburb of Clinton, but his parents and he moved across the river to Fulton, Illinois when Ingwersen was in grade school.