JIM BAUSCH

BAUSCH, JAMES ALOYSIUS BERNARD 'JIM'                Brother of Frank Bausch ('32)

Hometown:  Wichita, KS (Cathedral HS)
Transferred from Wichita University
Born: 3/29/1906 Marion, SD
Died: 7/9/1974 Hot Springs, AR

CATEGORY   TOTAL   1930
YEAR     So.*
POSITION     C
HEIGHT      
WEIGHT      
JERSEY      
Games/Games Started 17/   17/
Points  77   77
    Per Game 4.5   4.5
Production Points/Minute      

* Lettered

Lettered in track '30

Lettered in football '29-'31


 

Photo of James Bausch

 

 

 

 

 

JAMES ‘JIM’ALOYSIUS BERNARD BAUSCH (Player 1930)       

‘Jarrin Jim’, considered by many to be the greatest all-around athlete in Kansas history, only played one season of basketball at Kansas, so isn’t included here solely because of his prowess on the hardcourt, but because of his outstanding achievements in a variety of sports.   

Jim was born in Marion Junction, South Dakota, but grew up in Garden Plain, Kansas, where his family had a 500-acre farm.  Early on, he became a star athlete, excelling in Football, basketball and track at Garden Plain High School.  He switched to Cathedral High School in Wichita, Kansas for his junior year to play on one of the state’s best football teams.  Strangely enough, he competed for Wichita’s East High School in track, where he won the state shot put title and led the team to the state championship.

After a year at Wichita State University, he was lured away to the University of Kansas in 1929, where he excelled in three sports.  He was twice named All-American as a fullback in football, was a center on the basketball team, and he threw the discus, javelin and shot, winning the national track championship. He was so good in fact that the other Big Six schools accused KU of illegally recruiting its star athlete.  When it became apparent that KU was not willing to declare its star player ineligible in 1930, several Big Six schools felt so threatened by him that they promised to boycott future games against the Jayhawks.  The balloting amounted to an ouster of KU from the conference.  So, with some encouragement, he left formal KU athletics in 1931 and spent the next year training   for the Olympics with KU track coach.  Competing with the Kansas City Athletic Club in 1931, Bausch competed in his first decathlon at the Kansas Relays and nearly set an American record. Two months later he set a new American record in the Pentathlon.

Graced with a muscular 6’2, 208-pound frame, he excelled at nearly everything. Thus, the decathlon was a perfect fit.  A week before he left for Los Angeles to appear in the Olympics, he told the Kansas City Star “I’ll win that decathlon, and what’s more, I’ll break the record.” Supremely confident, he stunned the world when he did win a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1932 Olympics, winning the shot put, discus, pole vault, and javelin, while smashing the world and Olympic records with 8,462 total points.  He was so dominant in the decathlon field events, its scoring structure was later revised to give more weight to track events.

In 1933 he was given the Sullivan Award as the nation’s top amateur athlete.

He spent a year in the NFL before retiring from athletics, and briefly played professional basketball.  His real passion did not lie in the world of athletic achievement however, and he gave up  sports entirely in the mid-thirties.  He took a job as a singer for a jazz orchestra, skipping the AAU championship in 1933 in order to sing with his band. When his attempt to establish a singing career did not bear fruit, he took a job with the IRS. He later fought in World War II, and then spent several years as an auditor for the IRS before going into the insurance industry.

In 1954, he became a charter inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame and in 1979, he became enshrined in the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame, making him one of only a handful of people who have been named to halls of fame in multiple sports.

His younger brother Pete also played football, basketball and track at KU and later played eight seasons in the NFL, starring for the Chicago Bears.

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