Yakima Valley College Athletics

Tabbed the "little magician" by Yakima Republic sports editor George Redmond, Coach Sherar earned the label with his remarkable success against basketball teams having a great height advantage over the Indians.  The Northwest championship team of 1957 was a prime example of Sherar's typically short but quick, highly skilled, and disciplined basketball teams.

A graduate of Washington State College, Sherar came to Yakima Valley College in 1935 as basketball and tennis coach, continuing as basketball coach through 1964 and tennis coach until 1977.  In addition, he served as the college's first Director of Athletics from 1946 to 1972, when he retired from his full-time faculty position.  On the occasion of his retirement in 1972, the college named the school's gymnasium in his honor. 

His YVC teams won conference basketball championships in 1940, 1941, and 1942, and the Northwest championship in 1957.  His tennis teams were conference champions twelve times and were undefeated from 1936-1943.

An avid and highly-skilled tennis player himself, Sherar won the National Grass Courts Doubles Championship in the senior 65 age bracket in 1972.  From 1967-1977 he was ranked No. 1 three times in the Pacific Northwest in the senior 60 and 65 brackets.  He was inducted into the NWAC Hall of Fame in 1989