Gary Walters

Gary D. Walters is an American former basketball coach and college athletics administrator. He served as the head men's basketball coach at Middlebury College in 1969–70, Union College in Schenectady, New York from 1973 to 1975, Dartmouth College from 1975 to 1979, and Providence College from 1979 to 1981, compiling a career college basketball coaching record of 254–171. Walters was the athletic director at his alma mater, Princeton University from 1994 to 2014.

College years Walters played point guard for Princeton on the 1965 NCAA Final Four men's basketball team led by Bill Bradley. Walters was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated with teammate Chris Thomforde in February 1967, while leading that year's team to a 25–3 record and a No. 5 ranking in the final national polls.

Walters graduated in 1967.

Career In 1970, Walters became the youngest head basketball coach in NCAA history, when he took over the duties at Middlebury College. He then spent three years as head coach at Union College, before returning to Princeton as Pete Carril's assistant coach in 1973, where he helped coach the Tigers to the 1975 NIT championship.

Walters also served as head coach at both Dartmouth College (and named New England Coach of the Year in 1976) and Providence College. In 1980 Walters was selected to coach at the U.S. Olympic Trials. He also served as a color analyst on Big East men's basketball telecasts in the 1980s and 1990s.

Walters joined Kidder, Peabody & Co. in 1981 as an investment representative. He left as a senior vice president and partner in 1990 to become senior partner of Woolf Associates Sports Management in Boston. He subsequently became managing director of Seaward Management, a Boston-based investment advisory firm, in 1992.

From June 1994 through August 2014, Walters was the director of athletics at Princeton, his alma mater. He was succeeded by another Princeton alum, Mollie Marcoux (Class of '91).

Princeton had four national champions during the 2012–13 school year. The Princeton field hockey and fencing teams won NCAA Championships, while the men's distance medley relay and épée fencer Eliza Stone claimed individual crowns. A year earlier, the Tigers produced three national champions in 2011–12 (the men's squash team, épée fencer Jonathan Yergler and steeplechase runner Donn Cabral). Princeton also had 17 Olympians who won a total of seven medals at the 2012 Summer Games in London, for a total that would have ranked 31st had Princeton been a country.

Walters has seen six members of his administrative staff become collegiate Directors of Athletics or Division I conference commissioners; most recently Michael Cross was appointed AD at Bradley in January 2010. Others include Jamie Zaninovich (Commissioner, West Coast Conference), Jim Fiore (former AD, Stony Brook), George Vander Zwaag (AD, Rochester) and Jim McLaughlin (AD, Union).

Princeton won 214 Ivy League championships and 48 national championships under Walters tenure as athletic director.

Walters was appointed to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee in 2002 and was elected chair of the committee for the 2006–07 season.

Princeton University has twice honored Walters in recent years. In 2007, he received the Princeton Varsity Club Award of Merit and in 2012 the Princeton Class of 1967 recognized his 18 years of loyal and distinguished service to the university by presenting him with the Class's Loyal Service Award.