NEW OLYMPIAN FOOTBALL COACH SEEKS TO TURN AROUND PROGRAM

Dorothy Gale made it famous in the Wizard of Oz, but Brad Carter couldn’t agree more — there’s no place like home.

Given a chance to return to his roots, Carter jumped at the opportunity to become the head football coach at Olympian High School.

A native of Alpine and El Cajon in the East County, Carter played at Granite Hills before moving on to Southwestern College where he became a sponge for the coaching techniques of Ed Carberry. It was there that he was bitten by the coaching bug.

He moved on to Central Methodist University in Missouri where he played wide receiver. But coaching was

Carter’s passion, and he assisted at Murrieta Mesa and Dana Hills highs before landing his first head coaching job at Cerritos High — all in the Southern Section.

Now he’ll try to turn around a program that has had just one winning record — 8-5 in 2016 under Paul Van Nostrand — in the past decade. It has been five years since the team advanced to the playoffs.

“We’ll hit the ground running,” said Carter, literally and figuratively, unable to mask his excitement.

“Of the 10 members of last year’s staff, only one isn’t returning. At Cerritos we had seven coaches total, so that’s a plus because it’s going to allow me to handle the offense and let a coach like Bing Dawson

and his crew work the defense.

“I think the thing I learned the most at Cerritos (where he was 13-13 in three years with two trips to the Southern Section playoffs, losing by two and a single point) was not to try to do too much. I know Bing’s a great defensive coach, so I can focus on offense.

“I learned that once you make the playoffs, everything is tighter — there is less room for error, so you have to get it right.”

A quick look at last year’s statistics showed that Olympian (4-6) gained twice as many yards passing as rushing, but Carter’s first challenge will be finding the right quarterback after sophomore Kristian Noriega transferred, taking his 1,332 yards and 10 TDS with him.

“We’ll run the ball,” said Carter, “because we want to control the tempo. We’re going to get a hard two weeks of practice in and see where we stand. We have a lot of skill players, and we want to take advantage of that.

“Although I can remember only having two freshmen make the varsity at Cerritos, I think the incoming freshman class is going to be very strong, and I expect the players from the freshman team a year ago to have an immediate impact.”

Carter was hired right after the school had spring practice, so some of his time is going to be spent learning who fits where. Film and video give you just so much of the big picture.

One of the things he has done is open wide the weight room doors, especially for the linemen where he sees plenty of room for growth. He checks off the recently renovated field as first rate. Some of the other facilities will be upgraded.

Another difference Carter noticed is that while he generally had 80 players for two levels at Cerritos, he has 120 players for three levels at Olympian.

“Cerritos didn’t have DNA in football, yet we won three straight league titles,” said the 32-year-old. “Olympian has a rich history in football, it is their DNA.”

In other words, he’s ready to roll. “For sure, the incoming group is solid, but we don’t buy into (former Notre Dame coach) Charlie Weis’ five-year plan. We want success right away, and I think with our schedule and being in Division IV, it isn’t unrealistic to look for that,” he said.

“The secret to success really is no secret — it’s hard work.”

Hard work in the South Bay League could result in a playoff bid.

You can’t blame Carter for thinking along those lines since last fall he returned to Granite Hills to watch former teammate Kellen Cobb coach those Eagles to the Division II-A state title.

“He did a great job,” Carter said. “We took our lumps when we were at Granite Hills and look at them now. Maybe in a couple years we’ll be in a position to play Granite Hills.”

Brad Carter