Beryl Shipley was born on August 10, 1926 in Kingsport, Tennessee. He was the son of Tom E. and Blanche Dykes Shipley of Kingsport, Tennessee. In 1949, he married Dolores Gerrard of Yahoo City, Mississippi. They had three daughters. Shipley died April 15, 2011 in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Shipley attended Dobyns-Bennett High School, lettering three times in basketball, twice in baseball and once in football. He served 24 months in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946. He then attended Hinds Junior College in Raymond, Mississippi where he was a starting guard. He graduated in 1951 with a B.S. in Health and Physical Education and a minor in social studies. After graduation, he accepted the position of head basketball-football-baseball coach at Morgan City High School in Morgan City, MS. In 1952, Shipley and his family moved to Starkville, MS where he was Starkville High School’s head basketball coach. He built a record of 111-26 in his five-year stay at Starkville High. In 1957, John Robert Bell, the Athletic Director at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (later known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and today the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), hired Shipley as head basketball coach for the Bulldogs. Shipley was head basketball coach for SLI/USL for the next sixteen years. He held 296 wins and only 129 losses and he earned the title of the “Winningest Coach in USL’s 100 Year History.” He had 15 winning seasons in his 16-year career here. Shipley is known for his many notable achievements while at SLI/USL. He was Gulf State’s Conference Coach of the year four times and runner-up two times. He was also Louisiana’s Collegiate Coach of the Year, and he earned many other awards. He was the first collegiate coach in the Deep South to have African American players on his team in 1966.