Sports: North Little Rock’s Fimple hits 500 career wins
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North Little Rock’s Daryl Fimple on the sidelines in the 2006 state title game at the then Alltel Arena. North Little Rock went on to win that game as Fimple claimed the first of four state titles. (Mark Buffalo photo)
The path to 500 career wins for North Little Rock girls coach Daryl Fimple didn’t have an easy start.
Fimple began his high school coaching career at Shirley after graduating from Arkansas Tech in 1997.
“I was at Shirley nine months,” Fimple told Leland Barclay with the Times Record, the newspaper in Fort Smith, for a 2015 story. “I lost my first 17 games. It was probably the most humbling experience I’ve ever had.”
For Fimple, who had been a standout defensive back in football and a guard in basketball as a high school student at Alma, and then a college basketball player at Arkansas Tech, it was the first time he had been on the losing end of things. But the losses didn’t last as Fimple turned things around at Shirley before going to Lonoke in 1999 and landing at North Little Rock in 2005 where he has guided his teams to the bulk of those wins and four state titles.
Fimple now has a career record of 500-137 and coaching runs in the family.
His older brother, Keith, is the head football coach at Conway, and there’s still a tight circle of high school friends, who are now coaches, like Ozark’s Jeremie Burns and the University of Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, as all stay in touch regularly and provide each other inspiration. In a Facebook post, Fimple wrote, “Thank you to all the great student-athletes I have coached from Shirley, Lonoke, and NLR. Everyone of you ladies is part of my success.” Fimple also credited his late father-in-law, Donnie, a veteran basketball coach himself, as one of his mentor’s. He also thanked Marty Barnes, at Arkansas Tech, as well as current UALR coach Joe Foley, who had an incredible run of success when he had been in Russellville.
Fimple described Foley as the GOAT, greatest of all time, and “he of few words pretty much raised me through my last two years of college and has always been there for me. Got me every job I have ever gotten.” The 500th win was also a bit of a family affair as Peyton, Fimple’s oldest daughter, is on the team and, “shared a bus seat with your oldest daughter on the way home,” from the West Memphis win.
“PRICELESS.”
North Little Rock coach Daryl Fimple and his 2020-21 team.
Where Fimple ranks
The most current record book from the AAA is 2018-19 and Daryl Fimple is not quite halfway to the state’s all-time win record of 1,063, set by Thednall Hill at Highland, who coached from 1952 to 1986. Mulberry’s Cotton Havener won a total of 2,270 games but was both boys and girls coach at different points in a career that spanned from 1945 to 1987.
Sports: North Little Rock’s Fimple hits 500 career wins
Sports: North Little Rock’s Fimple hits 500 career wins
Sports: North Little Rock’s Fimple hits 500 career wins
The path to 500 career wins for North Little Rock girls coach Daryl Fimple didn’t have an easy start.
Fimple began his high school coaching career at Shirley after graduating from Arkansas Tech in 1997.
“I was at Shirley nine months,” Fimple told Leland Barclay with the Times Record, the newspaper in Fort Smith, for a 2015 story. “I lost my first 17 games. It was probably the most humbling experience I’ve ever had.”
For Fimple, who had been a standout defensive back in football and a guard in basketball as a high school student at Alma, and then a college basketball player at Arkansas Tech, it was the first time he had been on the losing end of things.
But the losses didn’t last as Fimple turned things around at Shirley before going to Lonoke in 1999 and landing at North Little Rock in 2005 where he has guided his teams to the bulk of those wins and four state titles.
Fimple now has a career record of 500-137 and coaching runs in the family.
His older brother, Keith, is the head football coach at Conway, and there’s still a tight circle of high school friends, who are now coaches, like Ozark’s Jeremie Burns and the University of Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, as all stay in touch regularly and provide each other inspiration.
In a Facebook post, Fimple wrote, “Thank you to all the great student-athletes I have coached from Shirley, Lonoke, and NLR. Everyone of you ladies is part of my success.”
Fimple also credited his late father-in-law, Donnie, a veteran basketball coach himself, as one of his mentor’s.
He also thanked Marty Barnes, at Arkansas Tech, as well as current UALR coach Joe Foley, who had an incredible run of success when he had been in Russellville.
Fimple described Foley as the GOAT, greatest of all time, and “he of few words pretty much raised me through my last two years of college and has always been there for me. Got me every job I have ever gotten.”
The 500th win was also a bit of a family affair as Peyton, Fimple’s oldest daughter, is on the team and, “shared a bus seat with your oldest daughter on the way home,” from the West Memphis win.
“PRICELESS.”