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Never Afraid, Never A Doubt: The Legacy of Hershel Kimbrell, Hall of Fame Basketball Coach
Hershel Kimbrell served as head basketball coach at McMurry University for thirty-one years, winning 448 games and being named to the NAIA Hall of Fame.
His teams were mostly too small, too short, and too slow, perhaps, but they were the giant slayers, defeating top-ranked programs for one reason.
Coach Kimbrell taught his players they were better than they were, and they believed him.
Never Afraid, Never A Doubt is the biography of a man who believed in building winners.
And it had little to do with the scoreboard.
It is the story of a man as seen through the eyes of his players. He told them: “When every muscle and joint and ligament in your body is telling you it’s time to quit and you refuse to quit, you’ll dig down deep into a place you didn’t know you had, and you’ll find out you can accomplish more than you ever thought possible. At McMurry, we take the word “quit” out of the dictionary.”
As Chris Beard, head coach at Texas Tech University said, “If the talent on the floor was close, Coach Kimbrell would beat you every time.
His teams were mostly too small, too short, and too slow, perhaps, but they were the giant slayers, defeating top-ranked programs for one reason.
Coach Kimbrell taught his players they were better than they were, and they believed him.
Never Afraid, Never A Doubt is the biography of a man who believed in building winners.
And it had little to do with the scoreboard.
It is the story of a man as seen through the eyes of his players. He told them: “When every muscle and joint and ligament in your body is telling you it’s time to quit and you refuse to quit, you’ll dig down deep into a place you didn’t know you had, and you’ll find out you can accomplish more than you ever thought possible. At McMurry, we take the word “quit” out of the dictionary.”
As Chris Beard, head coach at Texas Tech University said, “If the talent on the floor was close, Coach Kimbrell would beat you every time.
416 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 20, 2021
3 people are currently reading
3 people want to read
About the author
Caleb Pirtle III
75 books47 followersCaleb Pirtle III is the author of more than seventy-five books. His novel, Back Side of a Blue Moon, received both the Beverly Hills Book Award and Best of Texas Book Award for Historical Fiction.
He has written four noir thrillers in the Ambrose Lincoln series: Secrets of the Dead, Conspiracy of Lies, Night Side of Dark, and Place of Skulls. . Secrets and Conspiracy are also audiobooks on audible.com. His most recent releases are Back Side of a Blue Moon, Friday Nights Don't Last Forever, Last Deadly Lie, and The Man Who Talks to Strangers. His short stories are featured in three anthologies: Run, Scream, and Bridges.
Pirtle is a graduate of The University of Texas in Austin and became the first student at the university to win the National William Randolph Hearst Award for feature writing. Several of his books and his magazine writing have received national and regional awards.
Pirtle has written two teleplays: Gambler V: Playing for Keeps, a mini-series for CBS television starring Kenny Rogers, Loni Anderson, Dixie Carter, and Mariska Hargitay, and The Texas Rangers, a TV movie for John Milius and TNT television. He wrote two novels for Berkeley based on the Gambler series: Dead Man’s Hand and Jokers Are Wild. He wrote the screenplay for one motion picture, Hot Wire, starring George Kennedy, and John Terry.
Pirtle’s narrative nonfiction, Gamble in the Devil’s Chalk is a true-life book about the fights and feuds during the founding of the controversial Giddings oilfield and From the Dark Side of the Rainbow, the story of a woman’s escape from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. His coffee-table quality book, XIT: The American Cowboy, became the publishing industry’s third best selling art book of all time.
Pirtle was a newspaper reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and served ten years as travel editor for Southern Living Magazine. He was editorial director for a Dallas custom publisher for more than twenty-five years.
He has written four noir thrillers in the Ambrose Lincoln series: Secrets of the Dead, Conspiracy of Lies, Night Side of Dark, and Place of Skulls. . Secrets and Conspiracy are also audiobooks on audible.com. His most recent releases are Back Side of a Blue Moon, Friday Nights Don't Last Forever, Last Deadly Lie, and The Man Who Talks to Strangers. His short stories are featured in three anthologies: Run, Scream, and Bridges.
Pirtle is a graduate of The University of Texas in Austin and became the first student at the university to win the National William Randolph Hearst Award for feature writing. Several of his books and his magazine writing have received national and regional awards.
Pirtle has written two teleplays: Gambler V: Playing for Keeps, a mini-series for CBS television starring Kenny Rogers, Loni Anderson, Dixie Carter, and Mariska Hargitay, and The Texas Rangers, a TV movie for John Milius and TNT television. He wrote two novels for Berkeley based on the Gambler series: Dead Man’s Hand and Jokers Are Wild. He wrote the screenplay for one motion picture, Hot Wire, starring George Kennedy, and John Terry.
Pirtle’s narrative nonfiction, Gamble in the Devil’s Chalk is a true-life book about the fights and feuds during the founding of the controversial Giddings oilfield and From the Dark Side of the Rainbow, the story of a woman’s escape from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. His coffee-table quality book, XIT: The American Cowboy, became the publishing industry’s third best selling art book of all time.
Pirtle was a newspaper reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and served ten years as travel editor for Southern Living Magazine. He was editorial director for a Dallas custom publisher for more than twenty-five years.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 22, 2021
I don’t care that I’m not a sports person.
I don’t care that I’ve never attended a basketball game.
I only know that I started reading Caleb Pirtle’s NEVER AFRAID, NEVER A DOUBT and couldn’t stop turning pages.
Pirtle presents the reader with the amazing story of Hershel Kimbrell, a basketball coach whose team won games nobody thought they could win. But what did it take to become that kind of coach? Hershel Kimbrell’s life started out with adversity. He grew up in the midst of the Great Depression, in a poverty-stricken family. Pirtle writes, “Plates didn’t have a lot of food on them at suppertime.” According to an old-fashioned country tradition, the youngest ate last. Hershel and two siblings were the youngest. They got to eat what was left in the cooking pots. Sometimes there wasn’t much left. After the age of four, Hershel Kimbrell was also missing a father, but he found a way to keep his spirit alive and strong.
What Hershel Kimbrell wasn’t missing was his ability to dream. As a child, he dreamed of basketball. He didn’t have an actual basketball to play with, but he took a worn-out football, stuffed with cotton seeds, and shot baskets into a metal ring taken from a barrel. As an adult, Hershel Kimbrell found a way to make his dreams a reality. He succeeded in playing basketball with great skill in high school and college. He loved the game so much that he became a coach. But what kept me interested in his story, was his tenacious spirit and “never-give-up” attitude. He not only believed in overcoming adversity, but he found of way of helping countless young men not to give up on themselves, to reach deep into their souls and find a way to go forward when there didn’t seem to be a way.
Hershel Kimbrell might have grown up without a father, but he became a father figure to his players. He believed in love, caring and lots of hard work. He took young players who didn’t seem to have much of a future and helped them to carve out a future they could be proud of. However, with Coach Kimbrell at the helm, that meant they had to endure and go beyond what they thought were their limits. They played basketball with teams that had the best players and all the perks, and yet the Indians won many of those games.
However, it’s the way Caleb Pirtle describes the details of those games that grabs the reader and keeps them glued to the page. Reading Pirtle’s portrayal of Coach Hershel Kimbrell and his McMurry Indians and the challenges they faced was as good as any thriller, and yet the stories are all true. Pirtle puts you in the middle of the action where you get to experience the excitement, anticipation and anxiety involved in brutal, punishing games that were hard fought and hard won.
Pirtle’s crisp, sharp style is the perfect vehicle needed to bring to life the story of a strong, fearless man, a man who faced incredible odds and came out a winner on the other side. It’s inspirational, filled with examples of what it means to care about others. It’s an incredible, true story about Hershel Kimbrell, told by an incredible writer.
After reading this story, I was left questioning the limits we often place on ourselves and remembering how Hershel Kimbrell demonstrated the ability we have to go beyond those limits. Highly recommended!
I don’t care that I’ve never attended a basketball game.
I only know that I started reading Caleb Pirtle’s NEVER AFRAID, NEVER A DOUBT and couldn’t stop turning pages.
Pirtle presents the reader with the amazing story of Hershel Kimbrell, a basketball coach whose team won games nobody thought they could win. But what did it take to become that kind of coach? Hershel Kimbrell’s life started out with adversity. He grew up in the midst of the Great Depression, in a poverty-stricken family. Pirtle writes, “Plates didn’t have a lot of food on them at suppertime.” According to an old-fashioned country tradition, the youngest ate last. Hershel and two siblings were the youngest. They got to eat what was left in the cooking pots. Sometimes there wasn’t much left. After the age of four, Hershel Kimbrell was also missing a father, but he found a way to keep his spirit alive and strong.
What Hershel Kimbrell wasn’t missing was his ability to dream. As a child, he dreamed of basketball. He didn’t have an actual basketball to play with, but he took a worn-out football, stuffed with cotton seeds, and shot baskets into a metal ring taken from a barrel. As an adult, Hershel Kimbrell found a way to make his dreams a reality. He succeeded in playing basketball with great skill in high school and college. He loved the game so much that he became a coach. But what kept me interested in his story, was his tenacious spirit and “never-give-up” attitude. He not only believed in overcoming adversity, but he found of way of helping countless young men not to give up on themselves, to reach deep into their souls and find a way to go forward when there didn’t seem to be a way.
Hershel Kimbrell might have grown up without a father, but he became a father figure to his players. He believed in love, caring and lots of hard work. He took young players who didn’t seem to have much of a future and helped them to carve out a future they could be proud of. However, with Coach Kimbrell at the helm, that meant they had to endure and go beyond what they thought were their limits. They played basketball with teams that had the best players and all the perks, and yet the Indians won many of those games.
However, it’s the way Caleb Pirtle describes the details of those games that grabs the reader and keeps them glued to the page. Reading Pirtle’s portrayal of Coach Hershel Kimbrell and his McMurry Indians and the challenges they faced was as good as any thriller, and yet the stories are all true. Pirtle puts you in the middle of the action where you get to experience the excitement, anticipation and anxiety involved in brutal, punishing games that were hard fought and hard won.
Pirtle’s crisp, sharp style is the perfect vehicle needed to bring to life the story of a strong, fearless man, a man who faced incredible odds and came out a winner on the other side. It’s inspirational, filled with examples of what it means to care about others. It’s an incredible, true story about Hershel Kimbrell, told by an incredible writer.
After reading this story, I was left questioning the limits we often place on ourselves and remembering how Hershel Kimbrell demonstrated the ability we have to go beyond those limits. Highly recommended!
February 27, 2021
In the hands of an excellent writer, sports writing can be moving, inspiring or exciting. And having read Caleb Pirtle’s fiction, I can attest to his excellence. So I came to this book with high hopes and was not disappointed. Never Afraid, Never a Doubt succeeds on all levels. Hershel Kimbrell, basketball coach at McMurry University for thirty-one years, drove and inspired the boys on the teams far beyond expectations. Pirtle respects his subject, but the respect he has for the often smaller and hardscrabble players that Kimbrell coached is obvious too. More so than many scribes, Pirtle places you in the moment, evoking a hot claustrophobic gym, young men thinking on the fly, and Kimbrell’s tactical and strategic finesse. This is a sports biography done right. Highly recommended.
February 23, 2021
Swish!!
Never Afraid, Never a Doubt is an in-depth look at a great man and coach, Hershel Kimbrell. I'm an old-time basketball fan from NE. Caleb Pirtle's depiction of the Mr Kimbrell reminded me of the coaches I watched bringing the kids along from raw high schoolers to sharp shooting defensive players. How did Kimbrell's teams pull out some of the most unexpected wins? How did the players hold together under some truly adverse conditions? A must read for all basketball fans! A must read for biography lovers. A must read for people who enjoy a truly wonderful story!
Never Afraid, Never a Doubt is an in-depth look at a great man and coach, Hershel Kimbrell. I'm an old-time basketball fan from NE. Caleb Pirtle's depiction of the Mr Kimbrell reminded me of the coaches I watched bringing the kids along from raw high schoolers to sharp shooting defensive players. How did Kimbrell's teams pull out some of the most unexpected wins? How did the players hold together under some truly adverse conditions? A must read for all basketball fans! A must read for biography lovers. A must read for people who enjoy a truly wonderful story!
March 16, 2021
Author Caleb Pirtle III shows his long-time reporter experience in grabbing readers. Then he masterfully weaves the story of the career of this renowned coach using fast basketball prose for a great story telling exercise. Reading the description of Coach Kimbrell's team and game philosophy helped me realize what a force he was for the game. His players were prepared because Hershel worked his five-man teams into a force that challenged all comers.
The research, interviews, and personal insights by Author Pirtle make this book as exciting as each game. You can visualize the people and places, hear the crowds, smell the sweat, and relate to the team's emotional commitment to the coach. The writing is that vivid.
This nonfiction memoir is nothing short of incredible about a man and how he ruled basketball. He brought the small Texas town, Abilene, to mean far more than just the Prettiest Girl Ever Seen. Coach Kimbrell created winners at all levels. A few stats from the book below.
"From 1959 to 1990, he won 448 games and eight Texas Intercollegiate Association Basketball Championships. His teams fought their way into the postseason playoffs sixteen times, and Kimbrell led McMurry to the NAIA National Tournament in Kansas City in 1962 with a 24-5 record. In 1985, he was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame.
Kimbrell coached basketball at only two schools during a forty-year career: Garland High School and McMurry University.
He could have gone to larger colleges. The offers certainly came. More prestige, perhaps. More money, assuredly.
He didn't leave.
Did the other schools have more prominent programs?
Probably.
Did he care?
No."
The story itself is fantastic because the man put this private Methodist University on the map. Hershel Kimbrell gave his life to his team, the university, and he loved them all. The method Caleb Pirtle uses to tell this story brings out all sides of this man. I totally recommend this to anyone who desires a true story about basketball, life, commitment, winning, and family. I love the fictional writing of Caleb Pirtle, but this memoir is so powerful from the first page to the last. Don't miss it.
The research, interviews, and personal insights by Author Pirtle make this book as exciting as each game. You can visualize the people and places, hear the crowds, smell the sweat, and relate to the team's emotional commitment to the coach. The writing is that vivid.
This nonfiction memoir is nothing short of incredible about a man and how he ruled basketball. He brought the small Texas town, Abilene, to mean far more than just the Prettiest Girl Ever Seen. Coach Kimbrell created winners at all levels. A few stats from the book below.
"From 1959 to 1990, he won 448 games and eight Texas Intercollegiate Association Basketball Championships. His teams fought their way into the postseason playoffs sixteen times, and Kimbrell led McMurry to the NAIA National Tournament in Kansas City in 1962 with a 24-5 record. In 1985, he was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame.
Kimbrell coached basketball at only two schools during a forty-year career: Garland High School and McMurry University.
He could have gone to larger colleges. The offers certainly came. More prestige, perhaps. More money, assuredly.
He didn't leave.
Did the other schools have more prominent programs?
Probably.
Did he care?
No."
The story itself is fantastic because the man put this private Methodist University on the map. Hershel Kimbrell gave his life to his team, the university, and he loved them all. The method Caleb Pirtle uses to tell this story brings out all sides of this man. I totally recommend this to anyone who desires a true story about basketball, life, commitment, winning, and family. I love the fictional writing of Caleb Pirtle, but this memoir is so powerful from the first page to the last. Don't miss it.
March 3, 2021
Caleb Pirtle’s latest book Never Afraid Never a Doubt is like those movies that you know are gonna make you cry—the David and Goliath stories that have you jumping out of your seat to root for the underdog. Only this is not a piece of fiction or a“let’s make ‘em cry” Hollywood script. This is the true story of Hershel Kimbrell, coach at McMurray University in Abilene, Texas. Once a star player in his youth at the school, he returned to his alma mater to coach kids who played out of a gym that Pirtle described as “battered, bedraggled, shabby, and dilapidated.” Coach Kimbrell worked the boys hard, made them dig down deep and find wellsprings of strength they never knew they had. With grit, loyalty, and the will to win, Kimbrell coached his boys to 448 game wins and eight Texas Intercollegiate Association Basketball Championships over a career that spanned thirty-one years.
With all the sports hyperbole we are exposed to on a daily basis, a story like Kimbrell’s could have easily been overlooked. But Caleb Pirtle, shined the spotlight on a remarkable hero from a small southern town who spent his life and talent giving back to the community he loved. Never Afraid Never a Doubt—it’s gonna make you jump out of your seat and cheer.
With all the sports hyperbole we are exposed to on a daily basis, a story like Kimbrell’s could have easily been overlooked. But Caleb Pirtle, shined the spotlight on a remarkable hero from a small southern town who spent his life and talent giving back to the community he loved. Never Afraid Never a Doubt—it’s gonna make you jump out of your seat and cheer.
October 8, 2021
I am a sports person, and this is one for the books. A fantastic read about Hershel Kimbrell, a basketball coach: the coach is the backbone of the game. They put their heart and soul into the team players, and the results are endless.
Caleb Pirtle narrates the games' that intrigue the reader and keep them turning the page. Reading the author's mindset drawing a picture of Coach Hershel Kimbrell and his McMurry Indians and the difficult task they went through was a great thriller, action, heartfelt, raw event.
The author is making the story more captivating.
Very exciting read, you don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy a well-written story about BasketBall. You will learn a thing or two about how tough to prepare for the game.
The coaches and teammates are; excellent at all the work, time, effort, sweat, pain, and challenges to win the game.
It takes passion, goals, being physically strong, and a love for the game. Well done, Caleb Pirtle. I highly recommend this fascinating true story.
Caleb Pirtle narrates the games' that intrigue the reader and keep them turning the page. Reading the author's mindset drawing a picture of Coach Hershel Kimbrell and his McMurry Indians and the difficult task they went through was a great thriller, action, heartfelt, raw event.
The author is making the story more captivating.
Very exciting read, you don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy a well-written story about BasketBall. You will learn a thing or two about how tough to prepare for the game.
The coaches and teammates are; excellent at all the work, time, effort, sweat, pain, and challenges to win the game.
It takes passion, goals, being physically strong, and a love for the game. Well done, Caleb Pirtle. I highly recommend this fascinating true story.
June 13, 2021
Great read for coaches…
For those involved in coaching, this is truly a great read. It’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about coaching kids who believe and will work for what you want to accomplish. That’s true coaching. Kimbrell found that formula, and the ripple effect of his impact? Wow, that’s immeasurable.
For those involved in coaching, this is truly a great read. It’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about coaching kids who believe and will work for what you want to accomplish. That’s true coaching. Kimbrell found that formula, and the ripple effect of his impact? Wow, that’s immeasurable.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews