Beryl Clyde Shipley (August 10, 1926 – April 15, 2011) was an American

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

coach. A native of

Kingsport, Tennessee Kingsport is a city in Sullivan and Hawkins counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, its population was 55,442. Lying along the Holston River, Kingsport is commonly included in what is known as the Mountain Empire, ...

, he is best known for his tenure as head coach of the University of Southwestern Louisiana—now as the

University of Louisiana at Lafayette The University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette, University of Louisiana, ULL, or UL) is a public research university in Lafayette, Louisiana. It has the largest enrollment within the nine-campus University of Louisiana System and the s ...

—from 1957 to 1973.

Career

Shipley was hired at what was then Southwestern Louisiana Institute in 1958. In 1966, Shipley recruited three black players, thus becoming the first collegiate coach in the

Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...

to have black players on his team. In a region where

Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

was a way of life well into the 1960s—long after most

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sou ...

were formally repealed—Shipley faced intense criticism and opposition for trying to integrate his teams. However, he said years later that he was tired of telling good players that he couldn't sign them because of an unwritten Gulf States Conference rule forbidding black players on conference teams. When state officials barred state money from being used to fund the scholarships for the players, Shipley had area black leaders chip in enough money to pay the players' way.Bradley, John Ed
An Accidental Hero: Beryl Shipley, 1926-2011

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, May 2, 2011. However, this violated an

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and ...

rule against players receiving financial assistance from outside their family. In 1968, partly due to this, the Ragin' Cajuns were slapped with two years' probation and barred from postseason play during that time.1968 USL infractions report
/ref> Shipley did not take long to recover from the probation, however. In 1972, the Ragin' Cajuns jumped to Division I, finished in the top 10 of most major polls and advanced all the way to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, becoming the first school to make the tournament in its first year of eligibility. They repeated this feat in 1973. However, a month after the tournament, Shipley abruptly resigned. That August, the NCAA found Southwestern Louisiana guilty of more than 125 violations. Most of them involved small cash payments to players, letting players borrow coaches' and boosters' cars, letting players use university credit cards to buy gas and buying clothes and other objects for players. However, the most severe violations involved massive academic fraud. The NCAA found that one of Shipley's assistants had altered a recruit's high school transcript and forged the principal's signature, and others close to the program had arranged for surrogates to take college entrance exams for prospective recruits. The NCAA responded by scrubbing the Ragin' Cajuns' 1972 and 1973 appearances from the books and shutting the program down for two years—the first time that the NCAA had ever punished a school with the so-called "death penalty," and to date the only multi-season cancellation ever handed down to a Division I member in any sport.1973 USL infraction report
/ref> Midway through the 1974-75 season, he became coach of the

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San Diego Conquistadors The San Diego Conquistadors (known as the San Diego Sails in their final, partial season), were an American Basketball Association (ABA) team based in San Diego. The "Q's", as they were popularly known, played from 1972 to 1975. As the Sails, the ...

Retirement and death

After this, he retired from coaching and became involved in the oil distribution business. In his later years, Shipley admitted to violating NCAA rules, but claimed he did so for "humanitarian reasons." In an interview with ''

'' in 2011, he mentioned that one of his players came to school with only one set of clothes and no sheets for his bed. The player was too poor to buy them, so Shipley felt compelled to buy some for him out of his own pocket. However, he denied knowing about the academic fraud, and fought for years to clear his name to no avail. He was largely ostracized by Southwestern Louisiana/Louisiana-Lafayette for many years; school officials took the line that as the head coach, he should have had more control over the program. Shipley suffered two heart attacks in the 1980s and later had surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2010 which eventually spread into his brain. Louisiana-Lafayette held a reunion of the 1972 and 1973 teams in January 2011, but by then Shipley was too sick to attend. Shipley died on April 15, 2011, at the age of 84.

References

External links

*
BasketballReference.com: Beryl Shipley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shipley, Beryl 1926 births 2011 deaths American men's basketball coaches Basketball coaches from Tennessee Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns athletic directors Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns men's basketball coaches San Diego Conquistadors coaches People from Kingsport, Tennessee