For Doug Wagemester, an opportunity with Mississippi State is too good to pass up

CEDAR RAPIDS — Some day they’d be together, they thought. Perhaps some day.

That day has turned out to be today for Chris Jans and Doug Wagemester.

The longtime Kirkwood Community College athletics director, Wagemester is leaving the school and joining the staff of the Mississippi State men’s basketball program. Jans is the head coach.

This has been a long time coming for the friends, Iowa natives and former Loras College teammates.

“It’s a long story,” Wagemester said Thursday afternoon. “One of those deals where the process kind of took some time. But once the decision was made on both ends, we had to keep it tight to the vest a little bit and kind of work through. But now it’s go time. We’ve got to start making moves in Cedar Rapids, move down here and start the process of making the transition.”

Wagemester will be senior associate athletics director of men’s basketball. He’ll get to attend practices but not directly be involved in them, other than being able to pull aside a player from time to time for advice.

He said his position also is partially administrative and community relations oriented.

“I’ve known Coach Wags my entire adult life,” Jans said in a press release from MSU. “Our relationship has been long and trustworthy. Wags will bring a multi-faceted skill set to our program. He knows me, knows ball and is a highly organized communicator who will serve our program well in the office, on campus, and in the community. We can’t wait to welcome Doug, Kim and his family to Starkville.”

Wagemester, 56, succeeded Jans as Kirkwood head men’s hoops coach in 1998 and led it for 15 years, winning 409 games before stepping down and concentrating solely on his duties as AD. He also was an assistant coach briefly for Cedar Rapids Prairie High School, where he was able to coach one of his sons.

Jans has been a coaching lifer, spending time at the junior-college level and at multiple Division I schools. He will be entering his third season leading Mississippi State.

“It was kind of my intention to get into coaching on my end at some level as soon as I got out of college. His was maybe a different path,” Wagemester said. “He was thinking more financial planning and business, so we went our separate ways. Long story short, that path didn’t work for him, he got into coaching, we’ve stayed in touch. He’s kind of taken that path where he’s been all over the country, mainly at the Division I level.

“I kind of did what I had to do to get to Kirkwood, then settle in and raise a family. But we always talked about working together. Basically doing it together, whatever that looked like. It’s something that nearly happened a couple of times, but just the timing wasn’t right. He lost one of his coaches in the spring, right around the time of the Final Four, maybe a little after. He wasn’t going to do anything with it until he got done recruiting, then that happened.”

Wagemester and his wife Kim have been Kirkwood staples for 26 years, which certainly is difficult for them to give up. But they are excited about this situation.

“With a lot of thought, conversations with family and friends, my wife and I decided it was something we needed to do,” he said. “There is a bit of sadness about leaving, if you let yourself go there. One of the things we’ve talked about is don’t be sad it’s over, be happy it happened. So we’re trying to leave it at that. But, obviously, we’ve got life-long family, friends, community groups in Cedar Rapids that we are going to miss on a daily basis.

“Hopefully some of those folks can live vicariously through us. We can come back and see them, they can come down and see us. It’ll just be a different dynamic. In the back of our minds, we may be back in that area when it’s all said and done, when we put our feet up.”

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