The winningest coach in Wisconsin high school basketball history has died. Jerry Petitgoue was 84
Never too busy to answer a question or too stubborn to ask one, he studied every aspect of basketball, watched the videos and did some of his own. He loved the game and shared the love.
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Greg Gard, who attended Petitgoue's camp long before becoming Wisconsin's head coach, talked a couple of seasons ago about their relationship.
'I'll get texts from him late at night, or I'll see something that he tweeted about basketball,' Gard said at the time, 'and I'm like, 'Coach, were you really watching an instructional video at 1 a.m. that you had to text me a question?''
Jerry Petitgoue retired as head basketball coach at Cuba City in 2023 after 52 seasons with a 1,027-249 record.
Asked subsequently, Petitgoue explained: 'I never really thought, hey, you know what? It's about 1 o'clock in the morning.' It was about defense. 'He got back to me the next day.'
Now those calls have stopped, and they'll be desperately missed.
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The winningest coach in Wisconsin high school basketball history died June 7 at age 84, his son Mark said via social media.
From 2023: A legendary and inspiring Wisconsin high school coach is about to retire. But at 82, Jerry Petitgoue isn't done with basketball yet.
Petitgoue coached for 60 years, 52 of those in Cuba City, a small town in farm country in southwest Wisconsin. He retired after 2022-23 with a record of 1,027-249, making him one of only about 20 coaches nationally known to have reached the 1,000-win plateau. Petitgoue's victory total may never be topped by a Wisconsin boys coach, given it leads by more than 300.
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In a statement shared by UW on June 8, Gard called Petitgoue the godfather of basketball in the state.
'No one has had a more impactful and influential career on the growth, popularity and expansion of basketball in Wisconsin than Jerry,' Gard's statement said. 'He was constantly searching for ways to improve the game and create more opportunities for coaches and players across the state.'
Petitgoue's teams won 29 conference championships, made 12 WIAA state tournament appearances and won titles in 1981, 1991 and 1998. He was named one of the coaches of the year by the National Federation of State High School Associations for 2020, when his team went 25-0 before the season ended early due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although numbers are part of any coach's legacy, Petitgoue said in a 2023 interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he didn't want them to define him.
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'I just would like to be known as he was a good person and tried to help people,' he said, 'because I think that's why we're put on this earth, to help people.'
Petitgoue grew up in Galena, Illinois, went to the University of Dubuque in Iowa and had two other brief coaching stints before landing at Cuba City.
Jerry Petitgoue's Cuba City teams won 29 conference championships, made 12 state touranments and won three WIAA titles.
He came close to leaving two times, Petitgoue said. The first was in 1984, when he interviewed at UW-Platteville, 10 miles up the road. Bo Ryan, now a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame member, got the job. The second was in 1997, when Dubuque was looking for a coach and he considered returning to his alma mater.
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'But that year, I knew I was going to have a good team, a really good team,' Petitgoue said. 'And it proved to be correct. We won the state championship that year, 1998.'
Several other times, Petitgoue told people he was going to retire only to change his mind, usually because there were a couple of players coming along he wanted to coach. Oftentimes he'd also coached their fathers in the quaint facility that in 1999 was officially designated Jerry Petitgoue Gymnasium.
Although Petitgoue retired from the classroom 20 years before he put down his clipboard, he considered himself a teacher before a coach. He preached 'Petitgoue's P's': Priority, purpose, passion, pride and preparation.
Petitgoue was dedicated to his basketball camp and to the Wisconsin State Basketball Coaches Association, for which he served as executive director for decades. He missed the WIAA state championship last season for the first time in decades due to health issues.
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As Petitgoue neared the end of his time on the bench he contemplated his teams' accomplishments, and conceded he had detractors – even former players – who believed Cuba City should have won more state titles.
'Yeah, would I love to go back one more time? We all would,' Petitgoue said. 'But if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen and the sun will shine tomorrow and hopefully these kids will have a great experience in basketball. I think that's the key.'
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin high school basketball coaching legend Jerry Petitgoue dies
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