Don Carthel

Smitty · December 11, 2006

I don't know what kind of coach Don Carthel is, but I got a good idea what kind of person he is from this article by Kevin Sherrington in Saturday's Dallas Morning News. This is one of the most amazing things I have ever heard of a coach doing:

10:58 PM CST on Saturday, December 9, 2006

By Kevin Sherrington

Coaching is a fraternity. One coach befriends another who worked for someone else, on and on, until you could pull up any staff and find the roots of at least a hundred more.

But it's not just the jobs they've shared that draw coaches together.

Sometimes it's nothing about the job at all.

Sam McElroy had been head football coach at Tarleton State for only three months when he and his wife found out why the youngest of their three children, Madison, or Madie, tired and bruised so easily.

Diagnosis: acute lymphatic leukemia.

They checked her into the hospital that night, May 16, 2005, and didn't come out for a month.

Every week since then, on Thursdays or Fridays, one of her parents takes 9-year-old Madie to Fort Worth for chemo treatments.

Seventeen down.

Sixty to go.

The good people of Stephenville have helped. They've prayed for the McElroys, raised money to defray medical bills, done whatever they could.

"If you've gotta go through something like this," McElroy says, "I can't imagine a better place to do it."

But help hasn't been limited to Stephenville. Folks in Granbury hosted a fundraiser. Abilene Christian University, too.

Colby Carthel coached on that ACU staff. He left it after last season to join his father, Don, at West Texas A&M.

One of Carthel's other assistants, Scott Parr, used to be on McElroy's staff at Tarleton State.

Don Carthel knew McElroy, too. Even knew his father, Bob, who coached at Navarro College in Corsicana.

Considering all the ties, it wasn't long before Carthel knew about Madie, too.

And when it came time for West Texas A&M and Tarleton State to play each other in the regular season's last game, a game to determine which would advance to the playoffs, Carthel called McElroy.

Asked him if it'd be OK to make an announcement at halftime of the game in Canyon.

And he'd need a picture of Madie, too.

Carthel's pre-recorded speech lasted about five minutes. After it was over, Madie's picture radiating from the video screen, redshirt West Texas players circulated among their 10,647 fans and passed Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets.

They counted up the collection, put it all in a box and taped it up, and West Texas' captains presented it to McElroy after the game.

Came to a little more than $14,000. West Texas' players and coaches put in $2,000.

And then there was this, too: The Buffaloes' unofficial mascot, Blake Bagwell, heard coaches talking about Madie that week and set out across campus on his own.

Came back with an envelope stuffed with $1,700.

Nearly a month later, Carthel is still getting checks from fans, and maybe that's the least of the residual effects.

"I think it did more good for our players to get involved like that," he says, "than anything they could have done outside football."

West Texas beat Tarleton, 21-16. The Buffs went two rounds into the playoffs before they were eliminated, finishing at 11-2.

Tarleton ended its season 6-4. McElroy wishes he could have beaten the Buffs, but it's hard to complain.

He's grateful beyond words to opposing fans for their generosity, and to West Texas for going to all the trouble the week of a pivotal game.

Coaches in the Lone Star Conference are "a pretty close-knit group," is the only way he can explain it.

"It certainly makes you appreciate the good days," he says, "when your kid wakes up with a smile on her face, and all's good with the world."

Edited December 11, 2006 by Smitty