Jerry has had many nicknames over the years, some are: Jer, Lames, Lamos, Chi-Chi, Crash Max and going back to his high school days at Kimberly where he was known as Jugger.
Jerry was an excellent athlete at Kimberly, having lettered in Baseball, Basketball and Football and was recently inducted into the Kimberly High School Hall of Fame. In 1955 he was their basketball Most Valuable Player and led the PaperMakers to the state tournament. After high school, Jerry took his show to nearby St. Norbert College, where he still ranks 10th on their all-time scoring list with 1281 points.
Mr. Lamers has, for the last 23 years, been a counselor at MATC, many of those years devoted to special needs students.
For the first 11 years he was at MATC, he was also an assistant basketball coach for Doug Redsten and me. I’m sure Doug would agree that any success the teams experienced during that time was as much to his credit as anyone. Jerry was always a positive thinker.....more like the eternal optimist. No matter how poorly we were playing, he would find something good in it. After I would finish chewing the team out at halftime, Lamers would say something like, “But Coach at least nobody got hurt.” or “It’s OK we will still give you meal money after the game.”
Jerry, Chi Chi, throughout his 23 years here, has also been the assistant golf coach to Doug Redsten and Bill Scheer. This is an unofficial, volunteer unpaid position, but Lamers will take a free meal and free round of golf anytime he can get one.
Lamos has many hobbies. He reads everything, he plays golf and goes to every sporting event around. He collects golf clubs, golf books and memorabilia. He, honest to goodness, has a basement and 3 spare bedrooms chucked full of his collections. It there’s an estate sale with golf club/or books, Jerry will be the first one there.
Mr. Lamers has been one of MATC’s best ambassadors. He’s always had one simple goal; that every coach and program and every student & student-athlete experience success at MATC. He worked very hard to make it happen!
Jerry and his wife June have 5 wonderful children and 12 beautiful grandkids.
