Doug Woolard

Doug Woolard grew up in Carbondale, Illinois. He played for the Carbondale Community High School boys' basketball team, which made consecutive appearances in the Illinois state tournament and finished second in 1967.

He went on to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he earned a degree in education. He later told the Southern Illinoisan that Carbondale would always be home: he and his wife grew up there and their children were born there.

Woolard began as a high school basketball coach in southern Illinois and eventually returned to Carbondale Community High School, his alma mater, where he coached and served as athletics director for more than a decade. In all he coached for about 15 years.

In 1988 he joined Washington State University as an assistant director of athletics, and from 1989 to 1994 he was associate director for external operations under athletic director Jim Livengood.

In October 1994 he became director of athletics at Saint Louis University. He guided the Billikens into Conference USA as a founding member and later into the Atlantic 10. The men's basketball team reached the NCAA tournament three times in his ten years and ranked among the top ten nationally in attendance in three seasons, peaking at an average of 17,708. He built a new soccer stadium, new softball and tennis facilities, added women's soccer in 1996, signed the department's first school-wide shoe and apparel contract with Nike, and helped start planning for Chaifetz Arena. He chaired the Conference USA directors of athletics and represented the league on the NCAA Academic, Eligibility and Compliance Cabinet.

In May 2004 he became director of athletics at the University of South Florida, as the Bulls prepared to move into the Big East. He oversaw major facility investment, but the program later saw falling football attendance and results and a drop in conference standing. He was reassigned in January 2014 and retired in 2014. A 2016 state audit questioned the size of 2014 payments to him and other staff.

Woolard was married to Cherrie, and they had two children, Chris and Amy. Chris Woolard became a longtime member of John Calipari's basketball staffs at Kentucky and Arkansas. In retirement Doug and Cherrie lived in the Tampa Bay area, near Clearwater.

In 2021 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He underwent a Whipple procedure in Philadelphia, chemotherapy in Tampa and treatment for a spread to the liver. When the tumor returned and was judged inoperable, he received five sessions of MRI-guided radiation at Miami Cancer Institute under Dr. Michael Chuong. Speaking in 2024, he said the team there had given him back his life.

Doug Woolard died on the night of Friday 30 October 2026, at the age of 76. The news was first shared by Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari and was reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 31 October. The cause of death and the place of death had not been made public at the time of writing, and funeral arrangements had not been announced.

Woolard is remembered at Saint Louis University for a decade in which the athletics department joined new conferences, filled its arena, built new facilities and earned a strong record in the classroom. His career, from a Carbondale high school court to the top of two Division I athletic departments, made him one of southern Illinois's best known figures in college sport.