Autauga Academy football has sudden change at head coaching position

By TIM GAYLE
It’s not a position Jeremy Carter wanted, but it’s certainly one he is familiar with.

Carter, Autauga Academy’s headmaster, will be leading the Generals’ football team in their season opener at Abbeville Christian on Friday after the team’s head coach, Trey Dunbar, stepped down on the first day of football practice to take a job as special teams coordinator at Wetumpka High. 

“We didn’t have enough time to hire a coach,” Carter said. “We’ll start a committee in December or January to start looking for a head football coach. I just stepped in as the interim head coach and I have another coach to step in as the interim athletic director.”

Carter was already serving as the Generals’ defensive coordinator when he stepped in on an interim basis for headmaster Larry Pickett last spring. He took over the position after Pickett passed away in May. It is his first administrative role, but his father Gerald served in the same capacity for more than a decade at Autauga Academy beginning in the mid-2000s. 

Carter, who played for his uncle James Carter at Billingsley High and led the Bears to a state championship in 1997, will now take over a program where his uncle is the school’s winningest coach, leading the Generals to a pair of state championships in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

It isn’t his first time in the position, however. Jeremy Carter, now in his 20th year of coaching, served as Autauga’s head coach in 2005-07, leading the Generals to the state championship game in 2005 and to the semifinals in 2006 and 2007. 

 He also served as a head coach at Billingsley in 2009 and at Prattville Christian Academy in 2019-20. 

He will retain the duties of defensive coordinator and said his primary goal after Dunbar’s departure was to maintain the same system that was already in place.

“We just tried to keep everything in our coaching world together, that the kids had already known,” Carter said. “We promoted some guys from within to the different duties that we do as a staff. That way, we keep the same terminology and we just get better as a team.”

Dunbar had served as the Generals’ offensive coordinator and was replaced in that capacity by Austin Carpenter. 

“Carpenter was going to be my JV (junior varsity) coach, but I promoted him,” Carter said. “We’re out looking for volunteers. We’ve got enough for the JV team and the pee-wee team, but we’re getting some coaches together for those teams.”

The offense, he added, “doesn’t take on any different identity. We’re just working on getting better with more quality reps.”

While the timing of the coaching change is terrible, Carter said he hasn’t seen any change in the players as they prepare for Friday’s 2023 opener on the road. 

“The kids understood his reasoning, but the kids wanted it for themselves, too,” Carter said. “It seems like they haven’t lost a beat. Some of them have stepped up and said, ‘Coach, we’ve got this, we’re OK,’ and that just shows their maturity. We haven’t had anyone miss practice or quit because of that reason.”