For the first time since 1995, the Fredericksburg High School varsity boys basketball team will have a new leader at the helm after legendary head coach Tim Kaman announced plans to retire at the end of this school year.

“They say that when you know it’s time, it’s time,” Tim Kaman said. “Some of it is just the fact that I can’t do some of the things that I like to do after having two neck surgeries. I can’t do the things that I used to be able to do on the court to help kids. After being here 31 years, I sometimes feel like they need another voice.”

Tim Kaman said that the decision to retire was not an easy one.

“In my mind, it’s kind of hard to think that I’m not going to be coaching,” Tim Kaman said. “I’m definitely going to miss the coaching aspect of it. It’s just time to step away.”

Tim Kaman ended up at FHS through a long chain of events that included a coaching stop in Fredericksburg by his father, Dennis Kaman.

“I have spent over half of my life as a Battlin’ Billie,” Tim Kaman said. “31 years as a coach, plus going to school here.”

Tim Kaman was a coach for 34 total years and in an educational capacity for 36 years.

Tim Kaman credits his dad (Dennis) for getting him into education and coaching.

“My dad (Dennis Kaman) was in education for 43 years and he coached here from 1984 to 1989,” Tim Kaman said. “I love sports. One of my character flaws, and I have many of them, is that I am overly competitive. I hate to lose. I’m so intense that I sometimes got into trouble and I got that way because of my older brother and I just idolized him. He was such a good athlete and played collegiate basketball and made it to the NAIA Final Four. He was three years older than I was and it got the point that my whole goal was to beat my brother in basketball.”

Even though Tim Kaman only played his senior season with the Battlin’ Billies, it became the storyline of his coaching career that eventually followed.

Tim Kaman graduated from FHS in 1985 and played collegiate basketball at Schreiner College in Kerrville.

Prior to moving to Fredericksburg as a high school student, Tim Kaman made the varsity squad at Robert E. Lee High School in Tyler where he played during his freshman and sophomore years in high school.

“Being a youngster in the point guard position, my job was to get the ball to other people,” Tim Kaman said. “We moved to Magnolia my junior year and they hadn’t had a winning record in over 25 years. We ended up going 15-15 and I had to learn to be a scorer there, which helped round out my game.”

From there, Dennis Kaman became coach in Fredericksburg and Tim Kaman spent his senior year in high school with the Battlin’ Billies.

“My dad came in and turned that FHS program around,” Tim Kaman said. “My dad made it to regionals twice during his five years here and that hadn’t been done since 1966 at the time.”

In just five seasons, Tim Kaman’s dad, Dennis Kaman, won 101 games for the Billies, including two regional appearances.

“He (Dennis) was once the all-time wins leader at FHS, but now he’s number two,” Tim Kaman said.

The Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post has a sports record book that has been compiled by sports editors at the newspaper over the years, and Tim Kaman eclipsed the 700 career-win mark this past March after posting a win over Ingram Tom Moore at the FHS Performance Gym.

638 of Tim Kaman’s career victories came at the helm of the Battlin’ Billies basketball program, firmly establishing Tim Kaman as the winningest boys’ basketball coach at FHS for years to come.

“The way I look at it, all of my wins are my dad’s wins because I wouldn’t have had any of them without his help,” Tim Kaman said.

Collegiate influence Schreiner College (now Schreiner University) in Kerrville is where Tim Kaman met another influential figure in his basketball career.

“In college, my coach at Schreiner was Richard Herbst,” Tim Kaman recalled. “He was just a tremendous coach who coached at Boerne and San Antonio Clark for a while. I learned so much from him and my dad and how to work with people and be a better person. Those two individuals are my biggest influence makers in my life.”

Tim Kaman spent a year as an assistant coach at Schreiner after playing for the Mountaineers.

“My first job in the public school system was at Alvin,” Tim Kaman said. “The next year I was an assistant at a high school near Dallas and after those two years, I went to Palmer, which was a 2A school. Then I went from Palmer to here (FHS).”

When Dennis Kaman retired from FHS in 1989, the Billies had six seasons without a Kaman in the head coaching position.

Kyle Short led the Billies from 1990 to 1994 followed by a one-year stint by Bruce Grider in 1995.

Outside of six years as a coach elsewhere in Texas, Tim Kaman has called Fredericksburg his home after he replaced Grider as head coach of the Battlin’ Billies in 1995 and 1996.

“It is also important to know that I have been fortunate enough to have coached against many outstanding coaches throughout the years, who have made me a better coach,” Kaman said. “Having to coach against the likes of Hall of Fame coaches Wayne Dickey, Charlie Boggess, Jan Jernberg and Stan Leech made me have to step up my game as a coach. Other outstanding coaches who I had to battle night in and night out include Barry Bowen, Kimble McHone, Brian Young and Clint Baty, who are all future Hall of Fame coaches, and the list goes on.

“I owe a lot of my success to my fellow coaches”

Leaving a legacy

“Retiring was a hard decision,” Tim Kaman said. “My dad got into it, and he was in education and I saw how he was able to impact lives and that’s what I wanted to do. That’s who I’m really going to miss. The kids. I have never regretted being here for the past 31 years.”

Kaman considers all of his teams being really special over the past 31 years at FHS.

“In 2000, we had a team that I thought had a legitimate chance to get to the state tournament,” Tim Kaman said. “We had a kid who was 6-foot-1 and we ran into Austin LBJ, who ended up going to state.”

FHS finished the 2000 season with an overall record of 28-6, 9-1 in district.

“In 2006-2007, we had a really good team,” Tim Kaman said. “That was a year that we were supposed to be Class 3A and we had the wrong numbers and ended up being in Class 4A. We ended up getting defeated by Pflugerville Connally who ended up getting to the state tournament.”

The 2006-2007 FHS squad finished 27-8 overall, 9-0 in district.

On paper, the Billies top season under Tim Kaman occurred in 2020 when FHS finished the year with an overall record of 33-2, including a 33-game winning streak that season.

“There was also a team that we had years ago that went something like 16-16 and I thought that we did really well,” Tim Kaman said. “I’ve had a number of teams that did really well, but there’s something special about every single one of them.”

Kaman also thanked his assistant coaches over the years.

“They include Wade Prejean, Jonathan Cook, Randy Watson, Jason Roemer and all of my freshman coaches,” Kaman said. “I just wanted to mention all these great coaches, because no one really does it alone. It is a group or team effort, and I am appreciative to all the coaches who were by my side or on the other side competing.”