By Denny Deady | Published Thursday, June 11, 2009
What would make an outstanding scholar, band member, and athlete who played just about every sport but football for his high school want to walk on at a Division I university and think he had a chance to make the football team?
For Brian Carpenter of Bridgeport, now a successful Wise County podiatrist, it was all about the challenge. Challenges have defined his life. They have made him stronger, made him appreciate the dawning of each new day and in the case of football, changed the course of his life.
After graduating from Bridgeport High School in 1985, he headed for Texas A&M University, following in the footsteps of his dad, Bob, who had been a yell leader there. He joined the Corps and the band and then decided to try out for head coach Jackie Sherrill's 12th Man kickoff team. Sherrill created the volunteer team as a means to connect the student body with the football team and honor the longstanding 12th Man tradition.
Most of the students who tried out for the team were Friday night heroes from small towns who were not considered good enough to play college ball. They longed to extend their gridiron careers even if it meant serving as tackling dummies for the scholarship athletes. All Carpenter could see was a challenge and the opportunity to make history.
He was among the select few who made the kickoff team and ended up playing four years for Coach Sherrill.
"It was an absolutely unbelievable experience," said Carpenter.
After a stellar academic career at Bridgeport High School, Carpenter planned to become a veterinarian at A&M. When his cleat got caught in the artificial turf during football practice, his ankle turned and with it his career. Like his teammates on the kickoff team, he was willing to play with pain rather than risk being cut. He sought out a podiatrist who made a special boot for his ankle. That College Station doctor talked to him about podiatry and how the profession doesn't require on-call duties, allowing for family time.
Today, Dr. Brian Carpenter has returned to his hometown. He has recently been named one of the 2009 Top Doctors by Forth Worth, Texas: The City's Magazie, the fifth consecutive year that he has been recognized with the honor in a vote by his peers through the Tarrant County Medical Society.
Carpenter is in practice at North Central Texas Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Decatur and the John Peter Smith Hospital Department of Orthopaedics in Fort Worth.
"Working with the indigent (at John Peter Smith) is rewarding, an opportunity to give back," Carpenter said.
Not only did football play a role in Carpenter's career choice, but it also introduced him to the love of his life, his wife Mollie.
"A fellow football player was married to Mollie's sister," Carpenter explained.
Mollie earned a degree in speech pathology from the University of North Texas, and they were married a year after being introduced.
They celebrated eight years of marriage on New Year's Eve this year and have three children, Cole, 7, Carson, 5 and Lindie, 1. Mollie is a professional photographer and owns Wise Photography in Bridgeport.
The grit and determination that it took to play for Coach Sherrill served Carpenter well four years ago when he battled cancer. The support he received during that time served to remind him why he wanted to return to his hometown and raise a family.
"It was an amazing outreach, from the whole county," he said. "We got calls and things from people we had never met."
Carpenter said less than 1 percent of people with his type of cancer survive.
"The guy upstairs took care of me," he added.
Carpenter believes he has led a blessed life, from the opportunity to live in the Middle East while his dad was in the oil and gas business, to the opportunity to serve as chief resident in podiatric surgery at Harvard Medical School/The Cambridge Hospital, to a fellowship in foot and ankle trauma at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. and now to have a private practice in his home county while being able to help those less fortunate at a county hospital in Fort Worth.
His framed No. 5 jersey from A&M's Cotton Bowl victory over Notre Dame on his office wall is a reminder of one of the most memorable chapters in his life.
"To walk out on Kyle Field with 90,000 people in the stands, it was a surreal experience. To have a chance to play Division I football ... just like today, I was looking for a challenge to push me to the limit," Carpenter said.
His latest challenge was to seek a seat on the Bridgeport School Board and work to return the district to the top rated district academically in the county. He won election to the board last month.
Carpenter says the 12th Man kickoff team was a "kamikaze, suicide, put your head through a wall type thing."
In the prologue to the book, "No Experience Required," Sherrill said the kickoff team was the "Aggie connection to the student body.
"I believed in the 12th Man. They never let me down, and I never doubted they would. Individually they may not have belonged on a college football field. But collectively, they would fight until there was no one left standing, and no one was ever able to get them all.
"They had a job to do, and no one did it better."
He could just have easily been talking about Brian Carpenter.
