Portland State Athletics mourns the passing of long-time Director of Sports Medicine Jim Wallis who died this week.
 
Wallis spent a more than three-decade career serving Portland State and thousands of Viking Athletes. He was hired on the Park Blocks in 1989 and saw the evolution of a Viking program from mostly Division II-level competition to Division I and the Big Sky Conference. When Wallis began at Portland State, the athletic training room was a closet-sized 400 square feet, and he had one graduate assistant. When he retired in 2020, the athletic training facility had become the expansive 4,000-square foot OHSU Sports Medicine Center, housing four full-time staff members and a number of graduate and student assistants.
 
During his career at Portland State, Wallis worked with every sports program offered by the Vikings. He specifically worked with men's basketball after its return to PSU in the 1990s.
 
Other credits for Wallis include being a certified kinesio taping instructor and the foremost expert on kinesio taping in the United States, as well as a published author on the subject. He travelled to international competitions with the U.S. Fencing and U.S. Saber teams as team athletic trainer. And, he was an affiliated assistant professor in the Portland State School of Community Health.

In 2010, Wallis received the NATA Athletic Trainers' Association Outstanding Service Award for his career of service and achievement in the field. He also was inducted into the Oregon Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame. In 2012, he received the Northwest Athletic Trainers Association District Director's award for many years of service to the district.
 
Wallis was a graduate of Washington State, with a Masters degree from the University of Arizona. He was Head Athletic Trainer at College of Idaho (1984-86), then Lewis and Clark College (1986-89) prior to coming to Portland State.
 
Service information is pending.
 
GOVIKS.COM FEATURE ON JIM WALLIS UPON HIS RETIREMENT IN 2020