Bio

Jerry Elton Sharp

Perkinston Agricultural High School & Junior College (1955-1957) / Basketball, Baseball
Brooklyn, Mississippi

Jerry Sharp attended Perkinston Junior College in 1955-57. He lettered two years in both basketball and baseball. As a starting guard on Coach Leo Jones’ 1955-56 basketball team, Sharp was averaging 20 points per game until he broke his arm in the second half of the Dec. 16, 1955, game against the Mississippi Southern College Freshmen and had to sit out most of the rest of the season. In spring 1956, Sharp had a 4-1 record on the mound for Coach Mel Carpenter’s initial baseball team. The next fall, Carpenter, by then Perk’s basketball mentor, placed Sharp in starting guard position for the 1956-57 edition of the Bulldogs basketeers. Sharp, who scored 605 points that season, was named Mississippi Association of Junior Colleges All-State First Team and ranked 15th in the nation among junior college scorers.

On May 6, 1957, Carpenter took his MAJC South Division champion Bulldogs to Aberdeen, where Sharp pitched them to a 9-7 state championship victory over the Itawamba Indians.

After graduation from Perk, Sharp attended the University of Kentucky on a baseball scholarship and was named an All-Southeastern Conference pitcher in 1959. After graduation from UK in 1960, he played professional baseball for the Chicago White Sox farm organization for three years, simultaneously beginning a career in education. In a 42-year career in four states, Sharp served 17 years as a teacher and coach and 25 years as a school administrator, earning a doctorate in school administration from the University of Southern Mississippi along the way.