Carpenter’s Coaching Tree

When El Dorado and Camden Fairview square off tonight at Memorial Stadium, one person very interested in what will be unfolding there will be patrolling the visiting sideline roughly 50 miles away in Stamps.

David Carpenter, who has led Junction City to six state championships, will be coaching the Dragons against Lafayette County, but the imprint he has left with the Wildcats and Cardinals is vast.

Six former players who have become coaches with the Wildcats and Cardinals will be trying to outmaneuver one another on Friday night.

Steven Jones, who guided Junction City to the 2A state crown in 2018 before leading El Dorado to the 6A title in 2021, is assisted by Byran Jones and Jamario Bell.

Camden Fairview also has three coaches with ties to Carpenter in Devin Ball, Will Houston and Keandre Evans.

“It’s a heavy dose of Dragons at both of them,” Carpenter said.

The Junction City coach wasn’t sure how many more of his former players had gone into the coaching ranks.

“I really don’t because we have several who played football for us, but they’re either basketball coaches or baseball coaches, just doing different sports,” Carpenter said.

Earlier in the summer, Carpenter took Junction City to a 7-on-7 tournament El Dorado was hosting, and several of the younger players who had heard of the exploits of the former Dragons during their playing days, got to see them in person.

“Most of our junior high guys went along with us because we wanted them to see what a big 7-on-7 tournament looked like and I needed some guys to help us with water and all of that,” Carpenter said. “As we’re out there, I was pointing out, ‘There’s Jamario. He played for us. There’s Steven and Byran.’ Of course, all of these young guys have heard all of the names, but they didn’t recognize the faces right off. They see their pictures, but they’ve changed through the years. They enjoyed it. It made them have a little more pride in what they were doing at the tournament because they were seeing our guys out doing stuff.”

Seeing so many of his former players get into the coaching ranks gives Carpenter plenty of pride.

“When you have all of these guys that want to get into the profession, that’s a great plus,” Carpenter said.

“It helps out with the guys that we have playing right now that get to see all of these former players out doing well in the sports that they all represent. That helps and gives the ones in school right now hope where they can go, ‘Heck, I can go on and keep playing a sport in the coach part of it and keep enjoying the game.’ That’s a great feeling to have.”

When the clock runs out in Stamps and the Dragons are beginning to make the trip back to Junction City, Carpenter said he will be busy trying to get in touch with his former players to see how things went at Memorial Stadium.

“That’s always something that we’ve done,” Carpenter said. “I’ll start texting as soon as we start heading back to the house. I get in contact with them as fast as I can.”