They battled to help each other as Jayhawks, cheered each other as Olympic basketball gold medalists and have remained close friends for more than 50 years. Now they and their spouses periodically find themselves in the same gym good-naturedly rooting against each other. Reason: Grandkids on opposing teams.

Does any other youth basketball program in America regularly have four Olympic champions on hand for games? It happens at Sport 2 Sport here when Barb and Allen Kelley, Carolie and Bill Hougland, Bill and Jeanine Lienhard and Charlie Hoag show up on a given night. There are girls representing two of the families.

Hougland, Lienhard and Hoag were on the victorious 1952 U.S. Olympic team after starring on Kansas’s NCAA title team, which had its 50th reunion last weekend. Hougland repeated in ’56 as a representative of the AAU Phillips 66ers. Al Kelley was a sophomore reserve with the ’52 college champs but didn’t make it to the Olympics until 1960, after starring with the AAU Peoria Cats. He got his gold medal, too.

Dr. Allen Kelley and wife Beverly have sons Hunter and Bray on a youth team young Al helps coach. The Houglands’ young heroes are Michael and Matthew Ruder, whose parents are Diane and Greg.

The Lienhards have a girl and two boys to enjoy. That trio is Jessica Scott, Ryan Scott and Cody Scott, the children of Betsy and Bruce Scott. Bruce also helps coach, and Betsy was an outstanding athlete in years past.

Charlie Hoag’s son is Chuck, with wife Lisa, and they also have a boy-girl combination for granddad to root for. Courtney Hoag is in the feminine ranks and Chase and Austin Hoag do the boy thing. Daddy Chuck, of course, played football at Lawrence High and KU.

Best thing you can wish these kids is that 50 years from now they will have enjoyed lives as rich, eventful and rewarding as their grandparents have had.

l A guy who helped write the book on effective sports information programs will be honored at halftime of the Kansas-Texas Tech basketball game this weekend. He’s the inimitable Don Pierce, former KU football star and publicist par excellence. He’ll formally be inducted into the KU Sports Hall of Fame. His Ted Watts portrait, complete with that ever-present cigar and Coke, already appropriately hangs outside the sports information office in the fieldhouse.

Don starred as an All-Big Six football center-linebacker at KU in the 1938-40 period and later took over the Jayhawk sports info operation. He did it all by himself in the days of the school’s first football bowl team (1947), an NCAA basketball title team (1952) and the Wilt Chamberlain era (1955-58), perhaps the most golden span ever for KU sports. He taught everyone else how to project, promote and analyze with perspective. His expertise and honesty were legend; his incredible solo act was quite a contrast to the media and publicity armies we see nowadays.

KU never had a more loyal and dedicated representative than Don Pierce, and he was sorely missed at the recent ’52 basketball reunion. He died at age 45 following an auto accident on New Year’s Eve, 1964.

KU will never have anyone else quite like him. His friendship and guidance are among the greatest treasures of my life.

Don’s widow, Vivian, daughter Ann, sons Wayne and Bobby and granddaughter Terri Forster-Hazelwood are on hand for the dedication ceremonies. They can’t make his tribute too glowing. Don was that “poet in the pressbox” who did so much to put KU, favorably, on the national map, time and again.

l First loves often remain in our hearts forever, and so it was with those KU athletics teams of the early 1950s, the first ones I ever got to cover full-time with the Journal-World. People from those teams, like Dr. Lyn Smith, who died this week after a stroke, had such class, dignity, intelligence and lilt that it’s no wonder a newspaper guy could get so attached to those groups and have such fond memories.

Lyn was a fine football and basketball player at Kansas, a great student, a tremendous citizen and highly accomplished in many fields, especially his chosen venture of internal medicine. When I heard the news, I felt like I’d been slammed in the gut with a sledgehammer. Imagine how his beloved wife Marty must have felt, and feels.

We are so enriched by the presence and contributions of people like Lyn Smith, who retired here after a fine career at the Mayo Clinic.

My first reaction to the loss of such a person is anger. He and Marty loved fly-fishing, and I’m hoping that real soon he’s working the best stream heaven can offer.

I wish someone could explain to me God’s sense of fairness when he takes people like Lyn and lets throat oysters like Osama bin Laden ply their evil trades. Yeah, I’m angry.

l A lady called and asked why Bud Stallworth hadn’t been included in our on-court photo of the ’52 KU basketball team. Twenty years too late. Bud’s seasons were 1970-72. Told him about the call and he laughed like mad.

“Got a call the other day from Wint Winter Sr. wanting to know if I’d join an over-60 team he was forming for a tournament. I told him I’d been in school with his son, Wint Jr., not Clyde Lovellette,” Bud giggled.