Tracy Carpenter was named the new head basketball coach at San
Benito High School on Thursday after holding similar positions in
New Zealand, where he coached the women’s national team and was the
top assistant for the team at the Olympic Games in Sydney
HOLLISTER
Tracy Carpenter has been around the world and back, and now he’s the new head coach of the San Benito High boys basketball team.
Carpenter, 52, was introduced to about 23 student-athletes on Thursday at the SBHS campus, some of whom were in awe of his extensive resume.
A 1974 graduate of SBHS, Carpenter has been coaching basketball every year since the 1979-80 season.
“I’m back because I want to give back,” Carpenter said. “This is where I started and I have a chance to help others. I want them to have a good experience. Hopefully, that’s gonna be the case.”
Carpenter recently returned from New Zealand just a year and a half ago, where he was the head coach of the women’s national team from 2000-03, and the top assistant coach for the team at the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000.
His resume stretches to all different levels, though. His coaching career includes stops at Gilroy High School, a community college and two professional teams.
“We had an excellent pool of applicants, and the fact that coach Carpenter has so much experience and the fact that he’s a homegrown person, it was great to have that quality of an applicant,” Athletic Director Tod Thatcher said. “We couldn’t be happier.”
Carpenter, meanwhile, held Hollister and SBHS in high regard.
“It was always in the back of my mind, but I never knew that it would happen,” Carpenter said of returning to Hollister. “This is a special place … and being from here made it that much more special. It was a little bit of a dream to come back.”
Noting in his introduction that San Benito is probably the only high school position he would have accepted, Carpenter’s very first job out of college was coaching the freshman team at Gilroy High for one season in 1979.
Later coaching the GHS junior varsity team for two years, Carpenter took over the varsity program from 1982-92, compiling a 215-99 (.684) record with the Mustangs.
In fact, over his 13 seasons at GHS, Carpenter led the Mustangs past Hollister in every game except one – it was the last game in his 13th year in Gilroy when a John Becerra-led San Benito squad ended the long drought.
Jeremy Dirks (GHS ’93), who played under Carpenter and is the current varsity head coach at GHS, had high praise for the new Haybaler.
“He’s a very good coach,” Dirks said. “They got a steal.”
Taking over the position from Becerra, who most recently coached the ‘Balers to back-to-back appearances in the CIF-Central Coast Section Division I basketball playoffs, Carpenter inherits a young team that will lose just four seniors to graduation this year.
Last season, San Benito went 6-6 in the Tri-County Athletic League and 15-13 overall, falling to top-seeded Piedmont Hills in the CCS quarterfinals.
Thursday’s introduction was the first time Carpenter got a chance to see some of his incoming players in person, many of whom stayed afterward to shake hands and discuss shop with the new head coach.
Carpenter said he’s a big believer in defense – “The constant is always defense,” he said – and plans on playing a difficult schedule in order to be tested, in order to improve.
“We’re gonna be aggressive at whatever we do,” Carpenter added. “And we’re gonna defend with honor.”
He has developed those philosophies after having coached at Gavilan College (1992-94), for the San Jose Spiders of the National Women’s Basketball League (2005), and the North Harbour Kings of New Zealand’s National Basketball League where he was named national coach of the year in 2000. He took over the Kings in 1999 from Tony Bennett, who later won the Naismith College Coach of the Year Award while at Washington State University.
Carpenter returns to Hollister having come full-circle.
“He’s been around the world,” Thatcher said.
Said Carpenter, “We just want to have a team that our student body and the town will be proud of. We will expect nothing less than to be the hardest working high school basketball team there is. We will prepare to the best of our ability, and hopefully, we will raise the level and have the chance to compete for some championships.”
