The Great Clyde Carter

[50's PONY]

Championship Memoirs / Hidden legacy
Carter holds a special place in Denton history


09:38 AM CDT on Sunday, July 9, 2006
Story by Jake Floyd / Staff Writer



CHAMPIONSHIP MEMOIRS
This is the first of a four-part series of the area's championship past.
Clyde Carter holds a rare place in Denton athletics history.

He was part of the city’s first state title and was named a collegiate all-American in a completely different sport — one in which he ended up as the head coach of the Broncos years later.


DRC/Al Key
The 1931 issue of The Bronco yearbook chronicles the state championship run of the 1930 Denton High School basketball team.
Carter, who died in 1993, may be somewhat of a forgotten figure in Denton today but he left as much of a mark on Denton High School athletics as anybody in the past 80 years. From the late 1920s to the late 1940s, very few made the impression Carter did.

It all began around the same time as the Great Depression, and Carter and the Broncos were able to supply a little optimism to the locals.



In the spotlight on the court

Carter made his first splash in a sport he didn’t even consider No. 1. He had plenty of help, but did play a role in the first-ever state title at Denton High School — in basketball.

The high school was what now serves as Calhoun Middle School, and a modified version at that. Winning the state title was the biggest story of the year, but coming in a close second was the addition of a fancy new scoreboard that had string running from the numbers on the wall to the scorer’s table.

Ancient as it may sound, that scoreboard rarely had the visiting team on the winning side. Carter and the Broncos went 20-5 that season, ending the year on an 11-game win streak.

Denton won the 10th district by beating Highland Park 17-12 — the low score due to a jump ball after each made basket. The Broncos swept Wills Point in a three-game series and then it was on to the state tournament.

According to his wife Mary, Carter would have never been a part of the team that season had head coach Dan McAlister not ventured to the outskirts of Denton to see a young boy playing outside. He was talented enough to play, but missing one thing.

“He was a country boy and the coach came down to watch him play and he was so impressed with him, but he didn’t have any shoes,” Mary Carter said. “The family had seven boys so they were pretty hard up.”

Thankfully for the Broncos, Carter was able to come up with some shoes and join one of the most talented groups to ever play at Denton.

Led by Nimrod Borchardt, Albert Zeretzke and John Smyers — all of whom went on to play at North Texas — the Broncos slipped by Houston Reagan High, 16-14, in the first round. Denton’s toughest contest was getting by archrival Athens, 24-19, in the next round before cruising in the title game, 30-11, against Estelline. Athens had beaten Denton in the state title game in 1927 and 1929, but the Broncos won state in 1930 and 1935.

No Denton basketball team has been in a state championship game since and only the girls soccer team has won a UIL state title in the past 71 years at DHS, going back-to-back in 2003 and 2004.

Carter was a part of it all as a junior in 1930, but later in life you wouldn’t know it.

“You never heard a thing about it from him,” said Pat Carter, Clyde’s daughter-in-law. “He wasn’t the type to tell his own stories. You had to hear it from someone else.”

Carter’s story, at that point, was far from over. “Tarzan” as classmates called him, was more comfortable on a football field than he was the hardwood. In 1931, the Broncos didn’t do anything too impressive in football, but the yearbook from his senior year told the kind of player Carter was.

“‘Tarzan’ was the team’s strong point and the opponents’ stumbling block. He was always alert and in every play urging the boys on. His hard tackling and uncanny way of detecting ‘fake’ plays were an asset to the team. He is a good sport and a clean player. We will certainly miss him next year,” read the paragraph below his photo.

With what he accomplished on field and on the court, the Carter story continued.



The next level

In 1931, Carter achieved what would be one of the rarest of feats in athletics today when he received a scholarship to play both football and basketball at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.


Clyde Carter was a start t Denton High School in both basketball, left, and football.
Carter played both all the way through at SMU and was tabbed an All-American in football in 1934. He received varsity letters in football from 1932-34 and in basketball from 1933-35.

Family members say Carter probably talked least about his time at SMU, but a photo of him does hang in the suite area at Gerald J. Ford Stadium today.

Carter was named an All-American alongside Harry Shuford, Truman Spain and Bobby Wilson after a career in which the Ponies went 24-17-6 under head coach Ray Morrison and won the Southwest Conference in 1931. Carter was named all-conference in 1934 as well and played in the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco following that season.

In basketball, SMU improved each year Carter was on the team. Under head coach J.W. St. Clair, the Mustangs went 9-9 in 1932-33, 11-9 in 1933-34 and 14-3 in 1934-35.



Returning to his roots

As much as Carter ended up accomplishing outside of Denton, he couldn’t resist coming back.

After spending five years as a coach in Carthage and McAlister, Carter ended up taking the job as head football coach in Denton in 1942. Never abandoning his quiet, reserved persona, Carter finally found something to brag about. Not himself, but his players.

“He was very proud of his boys,” Pat Carter said. “Them, he would actually brag about.”

None maybe more so than June Davis who left Denton the same time as Carter in 1947.

Davis was the clear-cut leader of the 1947 squad, which missed the playoffs by two games. But Davis went on to the University of Texas where he was the captain of the 1951 Longhorns and was selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1952 NFL draft.

Outside of some bragging on players, Carter did little talking even as a head coach. Nevertheless, he was able to get his point across.

“He didn’t preach a lot,” said former player Perry Slack. “He wasn’t the Knute Rockne type who’d try to get you juiced up, but everyone respected him.

“Clyde was the boss and he was well respected. I didn’t know of anyone who bad-mouthed coach Carter on our team or any other team.”

Part of the reason Carter was well respected was because he was out there for the kids, his wife said.

“He loved coaching and he loved his boys,” Mary Carter said. “He teased them all the time, but he loved them.”

Slack remembered a certain habit Carter had when it came to addressing individual players. Some coaches like to grab facemasks, some will just look a player in the eyes, but Carter had a unique way.

“He liked to talk to individual players all the time, and when he did he had a habit of pulling on their ear,” Slack said. “Instead of putting his hand on your shoulder or something like that, he’d just reach up and twist your ear — nothing to hurt you or anything, but just messing with your ear.”



Remaining in education

Through the politics of athletics that was painfully prevalent in small towns during that time, Carter was eventually fired at Denton.

“Clyde wasn’t a PR guy too much,” Slack said. “I think the town and boosters just ran off a good coach like what happened with Hayden [Fry] at SMU. But also I don’t think he showed too much interest in trying to get along with the loud mouths of the booster club either, which probably hurt him.”

So Carter was out of coaching but not done with education.

“That’s all he knew,” Pat Carter said.

The former SMU All-American had little trouble finding a job in the Dallas Independent School District, his wife said. Carter took a position at a middle school in Oak Cliff.

“That’s when we were having a lot of the unrest … in Oak Cliff and they would put big guys that could defend themselves in those schools,” Pat Carter said.

But Carter was much more than just an intimidating physique at the middle school. His wife Mary was a nationally recognized dress designer who made dresses for the Miss America pageants, and he once put her talents to use in helping out a student.

“I can remember when he had a girl that was not coming to class and he went to visit their family to find out what the problem was,” Pat Carter said. “Their sole supporter had been taken into the army when we had the draft, so he had my mother-in-law take this girl shopping and buy her proper clothes because that’s why she wasn’t coming to school. Then he helped get the son out of the army since he was the lone provider for the family.”

From all accounts, that’s the kind of educator Carter was outside of being a quiet, stern coach. But as was the case with all of his accomplishments, those types of stories would not be heard from his mouth.

“He was very unassuming and you never knew these things about him because he never told his own stories, but I was aware of them, so I had a lot of admiration for him,” Pat Carter said. “So many people want credit for the things they do, but he wasn’t like that.”

Whether or not he would tell it himself, the story of Clyde Carter is one of the most intriguing in Denton athletics history. Carter passed away on September 23, 1993, because of diabetes, but the marks he left at DHS are here to stay.



JAKE FLOYD can be reached at 940-566-6873. His e-mail address is [email protected] .





HIGHLIGHTS
The Denton High School basketball team won the state championship in 1930. Here are some of the highlights from that season:

* Finished 20-5, winning final 11 in a row

* Won 10th district by beating Highland Park, 17-12

* Defeated Wills Point, 32-16, in Game 1, 36-12, in Game 2 in bi-district

State tournament

* Def. Reagan High (Houston), 16-14

* Def. Athens, 24-19

* Def. Estelline, 30-11



MEET THE TEAM
Players on Denton’s 1930 state championship team:

Nimrod Borchardt (captain)

Albert Zeretzke

John D. Smyers

Clyde Carter

E.C. Dittrich

Tom Finley

A.E. Wharton

Warren Finley

Theron McGovern

Tom Davis

Waine Stallings

Orme Lee Koiner










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[MrMustang1965]

Great story!