Summary of "All Guts and No Glory"

Picture this: a white junior college on Sand Mountain, Alabama, in the early 1970s; a directive to integrate the basketball team; a faculty, staff and administration which, by and large, did not support this endeavor; and a community known for tis segregationist violence and KKK activity. This is the situation into which a young Bill Elder, a future inductee into the NAIA Basketball Coaches' Hall of Fame, cautiously brought several black players.

Things went well the first year; but unbeknownst to Elder, the community's white supremacist anger bubbled just under the surface. Soon, the team would face numerous threats, racial slurs and epithets, a mob attack on a team bus, a gang showing up at the college gym on a scheduled game night to "make things clear," and a house set to blow up upon entry-as well as anonymous phone calls suggesting Elder was on a "hit list." In the midst of all of this, Elder, with wisdom beyond his years-for which he credits God-led his team of young men unscathed through a two-year period of unbelievable obstacles intended to generate fear and intimidation. And they won on the court, too.

Elder's engaging, tell-it-like-it-is style makes All Guts and No Glory a memoir both thought-provoking and worth reading.