Former Kansas Jayhawks hoops player, assistant coach, assistant AD Waugh dies at 95

Former University of Kansas basketball player and assistant coach Jerry Waugh, who went on to serve as an assistant athletic director and golf coach at his alma mater, has died at the age of 95.

A native of Wellington, Kansas, Waugh enrolled at KU in the spring of 1947 after being drafted out of high school and serving in the Army paratroopers for 18 months during World War II.

He served as KU team captain his senior season in 1950-51. Led by Clyde Lovellette, coach Phog Allen’s Jayhawks went on to win the NCAA championship the next season.

After teaching and coaching at the high school level in Emporia and Lawrence, Waugh joined Dick Harp’s KU coaching staff as assistant in 1956, coaching hoops from 1957-61.

He was part of the coaching staff during the 1956-57 season in which the Wilt Chamberlain-led Jayhawks finished as runners-up to North Carolina for the NCAA title. The Jayhawks lost to the Tar Heels in triple-overtime in the championship game.

“He was a true gentleman and a Jayhawk legend. We are better off for having him in our lives,” said Richard Konzem, a former KU associate athletic director and current Rockhurst University golf coach, and close friend of Waugh for many decades.

Gentleman was a term also used by former KU coach Harp, who told KU Athletics many years ago: “Jerry Waugh is one of the greatest gentlemen in the world of golf and all sports.”

Waugh, who was nicknamed “Sheriff” back in high school for his defensive prowess in basketball, also served as head men’s golf coach at KU from 1958-59. He worked as head basketball coach at Chico State and San Francisco State, returning to KU in 1974 to work as an assistant to athletic director Clyde Walker in the area of Olympic sports. He also worked as a liaison between the athletic department and the university, and he served as the men’s golf coach in 1976. He took over the women’s golf program in 1992 and coached the squad until 2000.

Waugh also is known in Lawrence and state of Kansas golf circles for helping develop the Alvamar Golf Club as well as Alvamar’s racquet and swim clubs. He helped form the Kansas Golf Foundation, was a 10-year member of the United States Golf Association and in 1997 was named to the KGA Hall of Fame.

Waugh retired from Kansas in 2000. Waugh and his wife, Dolores, lived in Lawrence for many years. Dolores died on Oct. 13, 2021 at the age of 92.

His true hobby, his passion, was following KU sports and playing golf.

Waugh was known in the golf world for shooting his age well past the age of 85.

“You’ve got to stay young,” he told the Lawrence Journal-World several years ago. “It’s all an attitude about your health and how you move and how you carry yourself. And you have to have fun playing golf and don’t get with people who complain.”

Waugh was inducted into the Kansas Golf Hall of Fame in 1998, Kansas Athletics Hall of Fame in 2000, the Wellington Crusader Wall of Recognition in 2013 and the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2017.

In May 2022, Kansas Athletics and Kansas Endowment created the Coach Jerry Waugh Women’s Golf Endowment. The endowment was implemented by former KU women’s golfers and head coach Lindsay Kuhle.

Waugh, who trained as a paratrooper in Fort Benning, Georgia immediately after graduating from high school, might have fought in the Battle of the Bulge had he been one year older.

“I was awful lucky I didn’t get into that and get my (tail) shot off,” he said in a past interview. “On the other hand, I was one year (too old) out of being on the (1952) national-championship team and getting to play in the Olympics. So it’s a tradeoff.”