Former Wisconsin Badgers guard Walt McGrory, a native Minnesotan who starred at Edina High School in the Twin Cities, has died after a battle with cancer.
McGrory spent four years at Wisconsin after joining the team as a walk-on in 2017. He was diagnosed in August 2021, just ahead of his fifth season playing basketball at Wisconsin, with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer.
Despite multiple limb salvage surgeries and chemotherapy, a tumor in his leg kept returning. Doctors amputated part of McGrory’s leg on April 7, 2023, though by that point the cancer had spread to his lungs.
In a GoFundMe created in September, McGrory announced that surgeons removed around 20 tumors from his lungs but couldn’t remove approximately 30-40 additional tumors.
“There have been lonely days and dark nights of the soul. But I have never been more optimistic than now. There is a cure out there,” McGrory wrote in his September announcement. “I have been knocked down countless times, but I will keep picking myself up until we find it. This disease has taken a lot from me, but it will never take my uncompromising will.”
Congratulations Walt McGrory! He broke the all-time boys' BB career scoring record set by Graham Woodward at 1,804. #Amazing pic.twitter.com/5lvrm4FZYL
— Edina Hornets (@edinahornets) January 28, 2017
The online fundraiser generated more than $136,000 to help McGrory’s family cover extensive medical costs in an effort to save his life. He wrote that all known treatment protocols for osteosarcoma didn’t work and the only treatments his insurance would cover were clinical trials, so the GoFundMe was launched to help pay for new, experimental treatments.
REST IN PEACE WALT MCGRORY
MY HIGHSCHOOL TEAMMATE AND AN EDINA BROTHER 💚😔🙏🏽
You fought hard and you will be missed.
F*** Cancer!— Reggie♛Lynch (@Air_Regiinald) December 18, 2023
McGrory set the all-time scoring record at Edina High School with 2,126 career points. As a senior, he averaged 26.3 points, 8.0 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game.
