Junction City Hall of Fame football coach David Carpenter coming out of retirement to lead Dragons

By Kyle Sutherland  

The Junction City School District released a statement Wednesday morning announcing that Hall of Fame football coach David Carpenter will return to the sidelines as the Dragons head coach, coming out of retirement after five years. Per sources, the talks of this move began sometime in January. 

Brad Smith, who has led the Dragons for the past three seasons, will resume duties as defensive coordinator, a position he held under both Carpenter and Stephen Jones from 2009-18. Jones, a Junction City alum and current El Dorado head coach, spent the 2017 and 2018 seasons between the Carpenter and Smith tenures and compiled a record of 25-3, guiding the team to back-to-back state Class 2A state championship games, winning the title in 2018.

When Jones left for El Dorado, Smith was promoted to head coach and has since gone 24-10, which is a success in the big picture, but Junction City has gone from 11 wins in Smith’s first season to nine, dropping to 5-5 this season. The Dragons were eliminated from the playoffs in the opening round for the first time in school history, falling to Gurdon, 26-22. 

Carpenter's return comes as Junction City is set to move up a class to the 3A-5 Conference this fall. 

Carpenter, 65, is tied for 10th all-time in wins (242-92-1) in state history and has spent 37 years coaching, 29 of those as the leader of the Dragons.

After playing for his father Ralph “Sporty” Carpenter at Henderson State in the mid-late 1970s, Carpenter served on various staffs as an assistant for several years before getting his first head-coaching job at Corning. After a season there, he took the job at Clarendon, where he remained until 1990 before moving to Junction City.

He spent the rest of his career with the Dragons until he retired the first time, except for the 1993 and 1994 seasons, when he left and then returned. He built the Dragons into a small-school juggernaut, winning six state titles, including twice going back-to-back in 2008-09 and 2012-13. Carpenter was inducted into the Henderson State Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Arkansas High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2019.