Central College Athletics

Jack Walvoord
Men's basketball

Walvoord coached for 29 seasons (1966-95), piloting the Dutch to 10 Iowa Conference championships while earning eight NCAA Division III tournament berths. From 1975-95, Walvoord’s clubs won more conference titles and made more NCAA tourney appearances than any other league team. He was named the conference coach of the year five times. Walvoord posted a 375-317 record, with more than twice as many wins as any other Central coach.

A standout guard and team captain for the Dutch as an undergraduate, Walvoord played two years of U.S. Army basketball at Fort Dix, N.J., then coached at Georgetown, Colo. before spending eight years at Bellflower (Calif.) High School. His Bellflower teams qualified for the California Interscholastic Federation Tournament six times, reaching the semifinals five times and capturing the 1965 CIF state championship.

He returned to Central in 1966, taking over for his college coach, Marinus Kregel. He also served as head baseball coach from 1966-67 and was head men’s cross country coach from 1966-73.

A native of Sheboygan Falls, Wis., Walvoord earned a master’s degree from the University of Colorado and served as an associate professor of physical education at Central. He and his wife, Joan, had two daughters and several grandchildren. He died in 2023.