FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — Tim Kaman has done a lot of winning. The Fredericksburg boys basketball coach won his 600th game in December. His father, Dennis, also coached in Fredericksburg and won over 520 games during his career. 

“I'm really kind of humbled by it, because I'm not near the coach that my dad was,” Tim Kaman said. 

The Kamans have been leading the Billies for 31 of the last 36 years. Both men are integral to why it’s been a winning program, even if they get the job done in different ways. 

“My dad was an outstanding teacher of the game. He taught kids how to get better, what they needed to do,” Kaman said. “My strength is more of the game coaching, figuring out a way to win the ballgame.”

Like all successful coaches, there are certain traits that both men possess. 

“I think passion for the game, but also passion for the players,” said Kaman, who’s in season No. 26 at Fredericksburg. 

Some traits you’re born with and some you learn. 

“I’ve always had that mentality of I'm going to show you,” Kaman said. “I hate to lose more than I like winning.” 

Other traits are passed on by role models. 

“I'd always say dad, ‘how did I play?’,” said Tim Kaman, who played for his dad at Fredericksburg in 1984-85. “And he would always turn it around and make me evaluate myself and say, ‘well how do you think you played?’.” 

Tim Kaman’s first head coaching job was at Palmer High School. He was the boys coach, and his dad was the girls coach. 

“He said, it's up to you to do what you want to do. If I asked for advice, he’d definitely give it, but it was probably more special just the fact that he was there,” Tim Kaman said. 

Kaman and his wife returned to Fredericksburg in 1994. Eventually Dennis and his wife, Barbara Kaman, came back too. 

“He moved here about two years before he died,” Tim Kaman said. “I had missed the fact that those three years at Palmer, I could talk with him any time.” 

“They’d talk for hours after the ball game,” Barbara Kaman said. “Couldn't get him to go to bed because they were too hyped up.”

There wasn’t a moment they weren’t excited about the game that allowed both men to make an impact in hundreds of lives. 

“If there was a troubled kid, a kid that was having difficulties in school, he would take that kid and he would work with that kid with his studies, but also gave him a chance to produce on the court,” Barbara said. 

It’s a winning philosophy that Tim Kaman also practices with his players.

 “Our job really is to try to make wonderful citizens, not just be able to win, but how you're going to respond when things don't go well,” Tim Kaman said. “All my wins, are really his wins because I'm just an extension of him… he's got a big smile on his face, just because I'm his son.”