Mountain State Times

First Lady of Mountaineer Basketball Barbara Schaus Passes Away

 The First Lady of Mountaineer basketball, Barbara Schaus, the wife of legendary coach Fred Schaus, died earlier today in Morgantown.
 
Growing up Barbara Jean Scherr locally, she and Fred met as WVU students and were married in 1950. She was by his side during the five seasons he played professional basketball in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and New York City.
 
She was by his side during his amazing six-year run as West Virginia University's coach in the late 1950s when he led the Mountaineers to the 1959 NCAA title game at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky.
 
She was by his side during his 12-year tenure in Los Angeles as the Lakers' head coach and then general manager. 
 
She was by his side when he returned to college basketball to coach at Purdue, and she was by his side when he returned to WVU in 1981 as the school's director of athletics.
 
It was during Schaus' AD tenure that football reached its pinnacle of success when Don Nehlen's Mountaineers faced top-ranked Notre Dame in the de facto national championship game in the 1989 Sunkist Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona.
 
Schaus, leading an athletic department that also included successful men's basketball coach Gale Catlett, steered Mountaineer athletics through a major financial crisis in the early 1980s and turned it into a profit-maker for West Virginia University.
 
And Barbara was there every step of the way, offering her husband support and counsel, as well as becoming one of Morgantown's most gracious hostesses. The Athletic Department Christmas parties that Barbara and Fred hosted in their Cheat Lake home were considered the highlight event of the year.
 
The two were also visible in the community supporting many worthwhile causes.
 
After Fred's retirement, the couple chose to remain in Morgantown, and Barbara continued to live here after Fred's death on Feb. 10, 2010.
 
Many years ago, West Virginia ran a "Greatest Mountaineer Thrill" series in its men's basketball programs and one of the features was authored by Fred.
 
The game he picked as his greatest thrill was a forgotten 32-point victory over Detroit on Feb. 17, 1958, just days after his wife nearly died from a sled riding accident at the Morgantown Golf & Country Club where the WVU Law School is presently located.
 
Barbara underwent a three-hour operation to repair broken vertebrae in her back and also contracted pneumonia from lying outdoors for a long period of time while waiting for emergency personnel during a five-degree night in Morgantown.
 
"When I tried to talk to the squad in the dressing room (before the game), I must admit that I choked up," he wrote. "Words just wouldn't come.
 
"What transpired in Mountaineer Field House that night made me proud of my alma mater," he continued. "It was difficult to find the words to evaluate the performance of the boys, who routed Detroit, 98-66. I do know it was the most perfect game I've ever seen a college team play, and as the years go by, I have come to realize more and more that this was the way in which Bobby Joe Smith, Joedy Gardner, Jerry West, Lloyd Sharrar, Don Vincent, and the others chose to so eloquently demonstrate their concern for my personal troubles."
 
He concluded, "I am a grateful man today for the fact that Barbara made a complete recovery."
 
The article was a public love letter to his devoted wife. 
 
They have two sons, John and Jim - Jim is currently the commissioner of the Southern Conference.
 
"She lit up every room," Jim tweeted earlier today. "She was the kindest person I have ever known. She was always there for me. Her suffering is over now, and she joins my dad in Heaven."
 
Barbara would have turned 95 on March 17. 

Original source can be found here