A two-sport athlete for the Vandals, he was a guard and small forward in basketball and a halfback and quarterback on the football team and a teammate of future coaches Lyle Smith and Tony Knap.
As seniors in 1938, they led the Vandals to a 6–3–1 (.650) record, Idaho's best in years and the last winning season for a quarter century.
Belko opted not to play baseball, though he considered it his best sport. A member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and senior class president, he earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1939.