If you’ve seen the movie “Coach Carter,” you know that Ken Carter is a no nonsense guy. 

In only his second year as head coach at Richmond High School in California, Carter made national news by locking his basketball team out of the gym until they improved their grades.  On April 13, Coach Carter spoke at Texas Tech University about life and success.

Coach Carter was born in McComb, Miss., and grew up in a household with seven sisters and a brother.

“I knew I was going to be successful when I was a kid,” Carter said.  “I told my mom when I was 8 years old that one day they were going to make a movie about my life, and I wrote that down and actually have that paper framed in my office today.” 

That movie about Carter’s life reached the silver screen in 2004, and Carter was ready when Paramount Pictures gave him the call.

“You have to be ready when opportunity knocks,” he said.  “When Paramount Pictures called me, I was ready.  I had every newspaper clipping and article about my team in a file, so as soon as they called, they had access to every bit of information about my team to make a film, so production started very quickly.” 

In fact, when Paramount called Carter, he thought it was a joke.

“I hung up on them at first because I thought it was one of my friends playing a joke on me.  When they called back, I saw on the caller ID that it really was them,” he said. 

He was ready to roll after that. 

“I went to the meeting with Paramount and negotiated my own deal and got the movie green lighted quicker than any other movie in history,” Carter said.  “I got to choose who I wanted to play me in the movie (Samuel L. Jackson), and I told them I wanted the kids from the actual 1999 team in the movie, and I wanted some family and friends in the movie,” Carter said.                                 

The main theme of Carter’s lecture was success. 

“You have to have three ingredients to be successful,” Carter said.  “Those three ingredients are accountability, integrity, and you have to be a good follower before you can be a good leader.”  He added that fifty percent of the freshmen that enter Richmond High don’t graduate, so success and successful people weren’t something they were too familiar with. 

“There were days I would cancel practice, and I would take my players to Silicon Valley just so they can get a look at what being successful looks like,” Carter said. 

In Silicon Valley, Carter said there were 250 millionaires per square mile, so the kids really got to see what being successful and being around successful people was like. 

Carter wasn’t always so kind when it came to getting a message across, though.  He locked the gym at Richmond High because 15 players were failing classes.  No players could get in the gym until everyone was passing, including his own son, who had a 3.8 GPA at the time. 

“I didn’t let anyone in,” Carter said.  “We were undefeated at the freshman, JV, and varsity level, so that was a total of 45 players.  Only 15 were failing but we were a team, so if one person fails, the team fails,” Carter said.

The team had to forfeit six games before Carter let them back in the gym. 

“I was not a popular person in the town, as you can imagine,” Carter said.  “I had people telling me, ‘this team is all these kids have,’ and I said that’s the problem right there.  I didn’t want this team to be all these kids had,” he added. 

On the topic of success, Carter said, “If you ask 100 people why they get up in the morning, 95 will tell you just because everyone else does.” 

Carter believes you have to have a purpose every time you wake up in the morning to be successful. 

“You don’t get paid by the hour at a job, you get paid by the value that you bring to that hour,” he said. 

Carter’s program now is no stranger to success, on or off the court. 

“I have a 100-percent graduation rate, and every player I have ever coached has gone on to college,” said Carter, who just completed his eighth season at Richmond High School.  “I get the point across to these kids if they want to get out of the inner city they have to go to college to be successful.”

Carter has won numerous prestigious awards from many organizations, including the NAACP’s Impact Citizen of the Year Award.  He also was named one of the “Ten Most Influential African Americans in the Bay Area,” for 2000 in the sports category.  Carter goes around the country in the basketball off-season to speak to college kids and give them his personal life story and tips on how he became a success himself. 

Carter said, “the best advice I can say to college students is when opportunity knocks, don’t let your roommate answer the door.  You get up and answer the door!”