University of San Francisco Athletics

Woolpert was born on December 19, 1915 in Danville, KY, and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1925. He attended his local Manual Arts High School, and went on to Los Angeles Junior College and Loyola Marymount University. At Loyola, he played basketball for three years with teammate Pete Newell under coach Jimmy Needles. Woolpert was initiated into the Alpha Delta Gamma fraternity, and graduated with a degree in Political Science. After his graduation in 1940, he joined the United States Army for three years. 
 
Upon discharge, he began his coaching career at Saint Ignatius College Preparatory in 1946 to 1950 and compiled a 63-29 record. When Pete Newell left USF to coach at Michigan State, Woolpert assumed the positions of Head Coach and Athletic Director. His first season the Dons had more losses than wins, but Woolpert worked to fuse some highly talented individuals into a fine team which would yield fewer points to their opponents (52.1 PPG) in 1954-1955, than every other team in the country. The Dons posted a 153-78 record in Woolpert’s nine years there, including a 60-game winning streak, which was surpassed later by UCLA’s 88-straight wins under Coach John Wooden until they lost in 1974 to Notre Dame. 
 
Woolpert was a part of USF’s history-making starting team in 1955 and 1956. The Dons had made the ground-breaking decision to go against the gentlemen’s agreement in effect during the early years of basketball not to play more than two African-American players at a time. Under Woolpert, the starting team included three African-American players: Bill Russell, K.C. Jones and Hall Perry, along with Carl Boldt and Mike Farmer. The team won the NCAA Tournaments in 1955 and in 1956, and finished third in 1957; at the time, he was the youngest basketball coach to win a national championship. Woolpert also won Coach of the Year Honors those same years.
 
Woolpert left USF in 1961 to coach the San Francisco Saints in the ABL for one year, and then left San Francisco to coach at the University of San Diego, where he stayed until 1969. At USD, the team compiled a 90-90 record, while he served as both Head Coach and as Athletic Director. He retired from coaching in 1969, and moved to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, and worked as a school bus driver in Sequim. His son Paul became the Assistant Coach of the G-League Basketball South Bay Lakers in Los Angeles.