Four late coaches: Impacts, memories

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By Steve J. Moga

Long-time late baseball and basket ball coaches Denny Short, Ray Lumpp, Bill Prince, and Don Jungels, Sr. made impacts on many athletes throughout the Aurora area the last five decades. All four legendary coaches passed away in the last year Each left a lasting legacy.

They were successful on and off the field and helped others develop and pursue their goals. But more importantly they were good individuals who taught their players many of the same quality values they displayed.

• Denny Short, who passed away from liver cancer at the age of 69 in August 2018, was an assistant high school baseball coach in the Aurora area for 43 years. The native of Midland, Mich. was an infielder for three years at Michigan State University, and was graduated in 1971. He began teaching and coaching at East Aurora High School in 1976 as an assistant. His Tomcat teams won a pair of conference championships. He was an assistant at Aurora Central Catholic over eight seasons. The Chargers won the 1982 State baseball championship, and finished second in the State in 1983.

He took his trusty fungo bat to Waubonsie Valley High School where he spent the next 20 years. The Warriors finished second in the State in 1996. Short helped with numerous baseball clinics and assisted with the Waubonsee Community College Fall league for more than 25 years. In the midst of all of that he volunteered at Aurora University from 1992 through 2014 and helped the Spartans win a dozen conference championship and earn 16 NCAA Tournament bids. Appropriately the career assistant coach was inducted into the Illinois Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2014. He was at Neuqua Valley until his cancer diagnosis in May 2018. Throughout it all Short displayed a sharp wit, sarcastic sense of humor, and a somewhat comical disdain for pitchers. He was a perfectionist, sometimes stubborn and rough around the edges. However, he was humble and shied away from recognition, characteristics that endeared him to players and coaches alike. A baseball lifer, fittingly one of coach Short’s last requests was to be cremated with his fungo bat and his No. 4 Neuqua Valley jersey, thus intermingled forever.

• A former basketball coach and administrator, Ray Lumpp passed away May 14, at the age of 89. He was one of the founding members of Waubonsee’s Athletic Department and essentially helped put the College on the map. After three coaching stints at the high school level, the native of downstate Shelby County arrived at Waubonsee in 1968 as the College’s first men’s basketball head coach. The tall, wiry, Lumpp directed the program for 11 seasons, and guided the Chiefs to four conference championships in the 1970s and five second-place finishes, while they won 75% of their conference games. His 1977 team earned a trip to the Region IV Finals, at a time when all 45 Illinois community colleges were in one division. Lumpp served as Waubonsee’s athletic director from 1974 until his retirement in 1986. During that time he umpired and officiated countless baseball and basketball games from junior high to collegiate levels. Lumpp was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1999 and was part of Waubonsee’s inaugural Athletic Hall of Fame class in 2007. His calm demeanor and straight-forward approach earned the respect of his players and opponents.

• Well-liked, admired, and respected, the affable Bill Prince passed away July 4 at the age of 83, one month after suffering a stroke. Born in Joplin, Mo. and raised in the southern Illinois Cisne, Prince was Waubonsee’s first athletic director, baseball coach, physical education instructor, and Physical Education Department chairman, simultaneously holding all those positions beginning in 1967. He even coached the Chiefs’ cross country teams for two years. He guided the golf program for six seasons and won a pair of conference championship. Prince’s baseball teams won a conference championship, and a pair of sectional championships in the mid-1970s. In addition, he served as Aurora University’s head baseball coach in 1978 and led the Spartans to a conference championship in his lone year with the program. He remained a physical education instructor at Waubonsee until retiring in 1993. He was subsequently inducted into the Skyway Conference in 2003, Waubonsee, 2007, and NJCAA Region IV 2013 Halls of Fame.

During the Summer months, Prince taught golf to thousands of students from 1975 to 2000 at Valley Green Golf Course in North Aurora, and remained an avid golf participant. A week before he fell ill, Prince checked a big item off of his bucket list, by playing a round at the famous Pebble Beach Golf Course in California with his son, Robert. Poetically, he ended that round on top by sinking a 15-foot putt on the 18th hole, the last time he played golf.

• Don Jungels passed away July 26 due to respiratory complications at the age of 80. A graduate of Marmion Academy and a U.S. Army veteran, he coached and sponsored teams in the Aurora Boys Baseball (ABB) and the Aurora Legion League for more than 50 years. As a coach his teams made it to the ABB league championship four times, and won a championship in 2010. He was an assistant coach in the Aurora Legion League the last few years with Tiger Athletic Association which won a championship in 2016. Jungels served as an ABB board member for several years and was inducted into the ABB Hall of Fame in 2009.

He worked as an electrician for 40 years and was a member of IBEW Local 461. For much of that time he ran his own business, Jungels Electric, and sponsored a team by that name in both the ABB minor, eight to 10 year olds, and major, 11-12 year olds. When he coached the major league crew, his son, Donnie, Jr., who played baseball at Waubonsee in the late 1980s, ran the minor league teams, and led them to a pair of championships and four runners-up the last 15 years. Jungels served as athletic director and basketball coach at St. Peter School in Aurora for 15 years. He devoted much of his adult life to coaching kids and helping Aurora area youth. His overall theme was excellent teaching of the game and always making baseball fun.

All four coaches had varying styles and in some ways vastly different personalities. But each shared a passion and love for the specific game and were great teachers, and in turn were beloved by many of their players. They truly will be missed by many grateful former students and athletes throughout the Fox Valley area, who were given great examples of how to play the game.

—Steve J. Moga, Sports information specialist, Waubonsee Community College

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