Published in Sportfolio Magazine, February 1948, pp. 25-30.

by ROY STEINFORT

DESPITE a cry-baby nickname, he's the University of Kentucky's one-man athletic program. For three years now, whenever Wildcat football, basketball or baseball squads get into a jam, their red-blooded rooters set up a howl for the Jones boy: "We want Wah-Wah!"

It sounds infantile, unless you've seen this baby play.

Wallace (Wah-Wah) Jones, now a 21-year-old star performer in three major collegiate sports, makes more costume changes than you're likely to see anywhere outside of a Broadway chorus line. When the Kentucky grid squad ends its regular season, Jones turns in his football gear to Coach Paul Bryant, takes a deep breath and dons his basketball uniform. Then, as soon as Coach Adolph Rupp's court magicians wind up their annual hoop campaign, Wah-Wah switches to knickers and starts limbering up his right arm to pitch with the Wildcat nine. This year in particular, if Kentucky's highly regarded basketball squad wins a bid to the Olympic games, the big (6 ft., 4 in., 205 lbs.), handsome super-star will be afussin' and afightin' for ol' Kaintuck on an overtime basis. Summer vacation may find him back in short basketball pants for a visit to London in July if the top-favored Blue and White quintet reaches and successfully weathers the Olympic trials this March.

He should return in time to dust off his shoulder pads and make like an All-American end again in the fall. And so on, until his scheduled graduation in the spring of 1949.

Wah-Wah's strong bid for All-American football honors last season was literally cut short. They sliced out his acute appendix in midseason, right after the Michigan State game. It seems Jonesie had felt some pain early on the morning of the game, but thought nothing of it. He laced on his gear, went out on the field and in the first seven minutes hauled down two passes for 41 yards. Then he sprained his ankle badly and was sidelined for the rest of the contest.

Coach Bryant was saying that Wah-Wah's work in the first seven minutes was his greatest gridiron performance to date.

"The kid has just hit his stride," said Bryant who played with the great Don Hutson at Alabama. "He reminds you a lot of Hut. He doesn't quite have Don's speed and he doesn't block as well. But on defensive play and catching those passes, they don't come much better."

Back on the Lexington, Ky., campus, Wah-Wah complained of a severe bellyache. They rushed him to a hospital and carved him open while at least three wild-eyed Wildcat coaches worried about the effect of the operation on the youth's immediate athletic future. They figuratively tore their hair, beat their breasts and inveighed against this unkindest cut of all.

In the less-harried atmosphere which followed the successful operation and the happy prediction of a speedy recovery for Wah-Wah, a philosophic wag reportedly approached the relieved but sober mentors and observed: "It looks like this is Kentucky's Year of Incision."

Wah-Wah was nationall publicized for his hardwood chievements at Harlan County (Ky.) high school and he was juggling several attractive college offers when Kentucky won his promise to matriculate in September, 1945. No large degree of persuasion was necessary. He was in love with a Kentucky co-ed.

It happened this way. Jones had agreed informally to attend Tennessee, Kentucky's much-hated South-of-the-Border rival. In fact, Jones had returned to his home in Harlan to pack his clothes for the trip to Knoxville. But Alva Ball, Middlesboro, Ky., business man and political boss, informed U. K. officials that Jones was still in town and available to Kentucky-if Kentucky wanted him. They wanted him. Wah-Wah got a rebate on his railroad ticket to Knoxville. What really sold Jones on Kentucky, he says now, was the fact that Alva Ball's attractive daughter Edna already was a student at the Lexington school.

Still a little leery of the turn of events which led to his last-minute preference for Blue and White athletic uniforms, Jones enrolled late in September to await the opening of Adolph Rupp's call for basketball talent. The start of hoop activities was several weeks way, so Wah-Wah decided he might as well see what football had to offer. Without any preseason preparedness, he went out for the football team. Three days later he broke into the Wildcat line-up at end against the University of Cincinnati.

Before the game ended, Jones had shown a surprising aptitude for diagnosing the opposition's offense, a glue-fingered ability to catch a majority of passes thrown in his general direction, and overall football savvy. Bernie Shively, who then was head coach, had Wallace in the starting lineup against Michigan State on the following Saturday.

After a first season of experience and the further polishing applied by new mentor Paul Bryant in 1946, Jones went on to near-unanimous selection for the all-Southeastern Conference eleven as a sophomore. Central Press named him to their All-American team.

But basketball was -and is- Wah-Wah's first love. In Harlan County high school, Jones practically rewrote the record book as a four-letter man. He tallied 2,398 points for an all-time four-year national scholastic scoring record. In one game during his senior year, the young mountaineer dropped 69 points through the nets. In that last season he bucketed 831 total points.

WALLACE'S basketball career is a better example than his gridiron activities of what a kid with the proper amount of determination can do. Under Coach Rupp's guidance, Kentucky these days represents the pinnacle of hoop success. And for anyone-even a highly-touted high school star-to crash into the Wildcats' lineup is an accomplishment, indeed.

Wah-Wah's first season at Kentucky posed no problems, however, because the big boys were still in the process of shedding olive drab for pin stripes. Jones was Rupp's starting center in his yearling season and, practically without a struggle, won nomination to the All-S.E.C. quintet. That was the year (1945-46) when the Wildcats captured the Invitational title by clipping Rhode Island State, 46-45, and Wah was a popular gent around the court.

But when he turned out for his sophomore basketball season, things were a little bit different at the Alumni Gym. Having done his bit for Paul Bryant as an All-Conference end, hoop practice was well along when the kid finally appeared in court regalia. He soon discovered that the Army had cut loose two big hunks of basketball talent and placed them at Baron Rupp's disposal. All-American center Bob Brannum was back along with another stalwart, 6 ft.-7 in. Alex Groza. Groza and Brannum were fighting it out for a starting spot with little concern for Jones' ability when Wah first showed up. A kid with any less love of the game would have tossed in his sweat jacket. But Jones isn't that kind of youngster. In his quiet, unassuming manner, he continued his methodical conditioning program.

In the fourth game of the season, Jones was given the starting assignment over Groza and Brannum. With less than five minutes gone in the game, he turned his ankle badly and had to retire to the bench. But, by mid-season, Wah-Wah had overtaken All-American Brannum, and Groza, too, felt the warm breath of competition from Jones. Brannum left Kentucky in a high dudgeon (1946 collegiate model) and enrolled at Michigan State where established All-American basketeers do not normally crowd each other off the court and onto the bench.

Baron Rupp knew he had to make a place in the lineup for Jones, whether at center, forward or guard. The rest is hoop history.

LIKE so many nicknames, Wah-Wah's stems from a childhood when Jones' older brother Hugh, now at Tennessee and playing basketball for the Volunteers, couldn't come out with "Wallace." He called his kid brother "Wah-Wah" and the corruption found favor among his family and friends.

Wah-Wah, slow to start growing, has the basketball background his success indicates, He first played as a third-grader in HarIan, where his widowed mother now runs a luncheonette and a rooming house. Because he was small, he played guard, but he was good enough even then to win his first sports trophy: a small bronze basketball, which he prizes more highly than any athletic award he has won since. He didn't shift to a forward position until growing pains overtook him in high school.

It was this record which led Adolph Rupp to release Wah-Wah's matriculation at Kentucky with this announcement to the press:

"Jones is the greatest high school basketball player ever to come out of Kentucky-and that is a mouthful of words, He should be one of our all-time greats."

His collegiate scoring record to date hardly touches his scholastic performance. But as a frosh he was runner-up on a high-scoring Kentucky squad with 290 points, And last year, despite the fact that he was inactive through a larger part of the season, he finished with a total of 217 points, to rank fifth among the 16 Wildcat sharpshooters.

Jones clings to his boyhood ambition to become a coach, but recently he has been toying with the idea of giving professional sports a remunerative fling. Whether it will be basketball, football or baseball, he doesn't yet know himself. Forthcoming propositions from various pro operators will help him decide.

Jones drew scout attention in baseball last spring by handcuffing a powerful Tennessee nine. The Volunteers, after beating Kentucky three straight, came to town apparently equipped to make it four in a row. Wah-Wah, short on pitching experience but long on promise, was assigned to tame Vol bats and, in true Merriwell fashion, Our Hero came through with a polished three-hitter. He finished the season with three wins and no defeats, and with next-to-nothing in earned runs chalked up against him. Over that stretch he allowed only 13 hits and gave up only four bases on balls while striking out 24 men.

In baseball togs, Wah greatly resembles the Yankees' late great Lou Gehrig and is the model athlete, in or out of a sports uniform. As any real sports hero should be, he is handsome, quiet and extremely friendly and unaffected, registering at the top of the campus popularity list. That "We want Wah-Wah!" cry has been heard in Madison Square Garden and other major arenas, as well as in Kentucky. Fans love him.

The big boy. is slow on the uptake when it comes to boasting, but his confidence in his own ability is reflected, without a trace of hoked-up modesty, in the way he answers questions about himself.

"I suppose you were kind of sorry you didn't go. to Tennessee after all when Groza and Brannum returned from the Army last year?" he was asked.

"Well, no," Jones said slowly. "I felt like I could be as good as they were. Competition never hurt anybody."

No, he says, he wasn't surprised to find himself playing varsity football after three days on the practice field.

Baseball? It's an easy game, "if you play it the way you're taught."

His easy confidence is plagued by one fear, though, and he admits it with a twinkle and a show of good humor.

"I've had two good basketball seasons and I'm afraid to think about having a bad one now," he smiles. "I just got married, you know, and you can guess what they'll say if I fizzle this year -- even with that appendectomy last fall."

Last July Wah-Wah and Edna Ball were married. She was graduated from the university last June and now is completely engrossed in a career of being "a housewife and mother." They live in a four-room suburban apartment. Although she has no particular aversion to his nickname, she always calls him "Wallace." Grid Coach Bryant is the only other person in Lexington who calls him that.

A fair student, Jones always manages to get passing grades in his studies, although he misses many classes in the fall and winter quarters because of football and basketball cross-country junkets.

He doesn't smoke or drink, so he's never very far out of condition. Wah-Wah himself says that, if he turns pro after graduation, his preference will be baseball first and basketball second. Football, as a paying career, runs poor third.

Kentucky insists that Jones received-no wad of under-the-table money. He gets the maximum athletic scholarship permitted by S.E.C. regulations; including $10 monthly expenses, laundry, books, and so forth.

Kentucky's opponents in three sports will be excused if the listen, shake their heads and observe: "It's still plenty tough keeping up with the Jones."

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