Hall of Fame
Jim Walsh honed his basketball skills in Newark, N.J., playing on the Newark Central State 5A Championship Team. He earned a basketball scholarship to Spring Hill College where he was National Free-Throw Champion and team captain.
Walsh served in the U.S. Navy for four years as a gunnery officer but knew his true calling was that of a coach. After one year of coaching at St. John’s High School in Gulfport, Miss., he arrived at Jesuit to assist varsity coach Bill Durick in both basketball and baseball. After two years he became head basketball coach. In basketball, his teams accumulated a record of 180-64. In his rookie-coaching year (1959), his team won the TCIL Basketball Championship. In 1965, he was named Dallas County 3A Coach of the Year.
Walsh served as Jesuit's athletic director for seven years during which he also served as president of the TCIL for three years. In 1966, Fr. Paul Schott, S.J., asked Walsh to form a development office for the school. He served as vice president of development for 32 years until 1998, when he became the first full-time employee of the Jesuit Foundation.
Walsh was inducted into the Spring Hill College Sports Hall of Fame in 1980. He was honored as the 1993 recipient of the Catholic Foundation’s McGill Award which recognizes exemplary Catholic leaders, and in 2013, the Jesuit gym was named in his honor.
