By Brian Zanzonico
One year, playing the first of two games against a team headed for the playoffs, Carter's basketball squad lost miserably when the opposing coach ran up the score. Carter always viewed running up the score as poor sportsmanship, an insult to a school's program, coaches and players. Though he led many title-bound teams against lesser competition, he never ran up the score, Mary Carter said. To get back at the opposing coach in the second game, he deployed the four corner stall, in which his players held the ball at one end of the floor. This was before the shot clock era, so there was no fouls for holding the ball too long.
"He always said, 'You may beat me, but you won't embarrass me,'" Carter would tell his daughter.
Carter, who taught physical education, coached and served as athletic director for 16 of his 33 years at Sewanhaka from 1942-1975, died in September at his home in Oceanside. He was 91.
Carter was born in Brooklyn in 1915 and grew up across the street from a minor league baseball field in East Rockaway. He played baseball, basketball and football at Lynbrook High School and continued at SUNY Cortland. He lettered in the three sports and graduated with a teaching degree in 1937. In 1972, Carter was inducted into Cortland's Hall of Fame as "one of the most versatile athletes in Cortland history, played varsity football, basketball and baseball as was captain and most valuable player in each of the sports," according to the school's Web site.
Carter, an outfielder, played minor league ball with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but a broken leg thwarted his dream of playing in Ebbets Field. Instead, he toured the northeast with several semiprofessional teams, playing with and against "minor leaguers on their way to the majors and major leaguers on the way back down to the minors," said his son, Ted. He played against hall of fame competition, including Negro Leaguers Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige. Carter retired from competitive play in the 1950s.
"He had excellent control, an easy motion and the ball came upon you quickly," Ted Carter said his father would say of Paige, who made the major leagues at 43. Robinson broke major league baseball's color barrier in 1946.
Ted Carter was a fine athlete in his own right, earning an athletic scholarship to Boston College and later playing semipro basketball in Europe. Carter's other son, Peter, earned a basketball scholarship to Rutgers University in New Jersey. Ted said despite his father's athletic prowess and love of coaching, he never pushed his children into sports. Carter was usually busy coaching his own teams and seldom got a chance to see his sons play. On one occasion, however, Carter coached Sewanhaka basketball against Ted's team at Oceanside High School. Ted Carter thought that was the only time his father saw him play.
"I later found out there were times when he would come to my games and watch, but he never told me," Ted Carter said.
One of Mary Carter's earliest memories of her father, the coach, is of a 1957 Sewanhaka baseball game in which 5-year-old Mary gave one of her father's players a peck on the cheek. A photographer captured the image, and it ran in a daily paper.
"I knew more about the character of my father than his coaching ability," Mary Carter said.
Shortly after her father's death, she received an e-mail from a non-athlete who graduated from Sewanhaka in 1965.
"I can't remember if your dad was his [writer's brother] baseball coach at Sewanhaka, but I do know that the only way a student could get a permission slip to enroll in Driver's Education was to get it signed by the head of the athletic department," wrote the student, a retired Nassau County Police Officer now living in Florida. "Although I wasn't the greatest athlete in the world, your dad gave me a chance to take the Driver's Ed. class, which meant I could get my driver's license a year earlier than the kids that didn't take Driver's Ed. It doesn't sound like a big deal now but back then only the "Jocks" got the chance to enroll in Driver's Ed."
East Rockaway High School was where Carter got his start as an educator in 1937, but Ted Carter said his father's heart was with Sewanhaka.
"He thought it was great before they split [into separate schools to form the Sewanhaka Central High School District]," Ted Carter said. "Even though it was a lot more work for him before the split, he liked it better."
Carter was preceded by his wife of 64 years, Mary. In addition to his son Ted and daughter Mary Christine Carter Morrison, he is survived by his children Susan Stump of Arizona; Nancy Carter-Failing of Merrick and Peter Carter of California. He is also survived by 12 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
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