If you would have told Johnny Carter the University Interscholastic League (UIL) would one day consider him to be one of the top 100 basketball coaches to ever walk the sidelines in the state of Texas back in 1966, he would have asked you to have your brain examined.

After all, the 23-year-old Madisonville native strode through the front doors of Kennard High School for his first interview without any coaching experience. What he did have was an impressive playing career under his belt at Madisonville and Lon Morris Junior College along with a fierce desire to win a state championship.

“At that time in my life I felt so fortunate to have guys who listened, who were hungry,” said Carter. “They were country boys who had never really achieved anything in basketball and, for some reason, we meshed extremely well. I thought I was so young-looking that these guys wouldn’t respect me because of my age. That turned out to be exactly the opposite. We just got along great and they would go through a brick wall for me. I was totally blessed.”

As if the task bestowed upon a rookie coach isn’t daunting enough under any circumstance, Carter took over a newly integrated Tigers squad in a time of great turmoil in the American South. The family he proceeded to build on the basketball court, predicated around hard work and a fastpaced, defensive-oriented style, was nothing short of legendary.

“I was told by the superintendent that interviewed me that we could have issues with (integration) and he asked how I was going to handle that,” said Carter, who never saw it as an issue, partly because he worked with Blacks and Whites alike in his father’s store. “I said I would treat everybody the same basically except when it comes to coaching. I am going to treat people the way I think they can perform the best. I don’t think you can treat everyone exactly the same when you’re coaching because some guys respond in different ways.”

Carter’s mind was always first and foremost on his overarching goal, which he accomplished early and often. His new Kennard family took the state title in his first season as head coach in 1967 and did so again in 1968 and 1970. His four years at Kennard alone would have likely been a good enough reason to earn him a spot in the Texas Basketball Hall of Fame, which he ultimately achieved in 2014.

“I thought I was absolutely dreaming when we went to state that first year and won the championship,” said Carter. “That was my whole goal in life at the time and it happened that first year. That doesn’t happen very often.”

In 2021, the 100th anniversary of the UIL’s inception, yet another badge of honor was pinned to his remarkable career. In honor of the anniversary, the UIL released a list of the 100 greatest basketball coaches and teams since 1921.

Along with his own personal selection to the prestigious list, Carter’s 43-0 1970 squad was included in the UIL’s 100 best teams.

“I was floored,” said Carter on his selection. “I didn’t even know they were doing this to be honest with you. I never had thought I was a great coach by any means, I just thought I was pretty good at motivating guys to play their best, go all out and give it all they got.”

According to Charles Breithaupt, Executive Director of the UIL and a close friend of Carter’s, he was a “no-brainer” for the organization when they were compiling the list.

“I put together a committee of some people I believed could represent and have the historical knowledge of all that has happened over the last 100 years,” said Breithaupt. “(Carter) was a first-ballot selection. What an outstanding guy, a class guy who represents what Texas basketball is all about.”

Carter has documented his experiences at Kennard in two books, The First Season: The Story of How a Rookie Coach Took a Newly Integrated Team to a Texas State Championship (2011) and The Pressing Champions (2018). The former centers around his first season at Kennard while the latter details his next three seasons, when he implemented the full court press defense throughout the entirety of every game.

“Back in those days, people would just press in the last two or three minutes if they were behind,” said Carter. “Very few people were doing that (throughout the entire game), that was kind of a new wrinkle in the coaching profession.”

He conceived the idea of running the press all game, every game after the Tigers used it to come back from a late deficit in the 1967 Regional Finals to punch their ticket to state.

“We are going back to Kennard and I oughta be thinking, ‘great, we are going to state my first year’,” said Carter. “But I’m thinking about the next year and using the full court pressure defense the entire game. From that point on, I did that the rest of my career.”

“He did stuff people really did not do back in the (1960s),” said Rick Sherley, Executive Director of the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches (TABC) and another close friend of Carter’s.

Sherley, a coaching legend in his own right, first met Carter when the aspiring author asked him to read The First Season, which he was thinking about publishing and looking for feedback.

“I read (the first draft) and said, ‘don’t change anything, it’s awesome’,” said Sherley.

Sherley inspired Carter to continue the story and document more of his career, which helped result in The Pressing Champions seven years later.

“He has been a great friend ever since and I cannot say enough about him,” said Sherley. “He is one of a kind and a really awesome coach who was ahead of his time. He used that up-tempo style, tweaked it and made it better. The rest is history.”

Carter’s time at Kennard was just the tip of the iceberg in his storied basketball career and encompassed 160 of his 903 career wins.

After Kennard, he served as an assistant at Howard Payne University in Brownwood for three years, where her helped lead the team to a Lone Star Conference Tri-Championship in 1971 and a National AAU appearance.

As a head coach at McLennan Community College in Waco, Carter won six straight conference titles and qualified for the Regional Tournament every year and the National Junior College Tournament in 1976. That same year, he was voted Junior College Coach of the Year by TABC.

He coached a pair of future NBA players at McLennan, including two-time NBA Champion Vinnie Johnson of the Detroit Pistons.

Carter was also an assistant coach for the University of Oklahoma for two years, where he helped lead the Sooners to the 1982 NIT Final Four.

Fittingly, his illustrious career ended exactly where it began. After a brief hiatus from coaching, Carter took the reigns of his alma mater in Madisonville for 22 seasons. He led the Mustangs to 16 playoff appearances as well as a state finals appearance in 1995.

Despite his official retirement from coaching, Carter has remained involved in the district in a number of capacities. He has offered a helping hand and guidance to the Madisonville coaches who have come after him and broadcasts a number of Mustang sporting events.

Editor’s Note: While this article is lengthy, it hardly scratches the surface of this local legend’s phenomenal coaching career. We at the Meteor congratulate Johnny Carter on yet another prestigious honor.