Carper Looks to Develop Players at ZHS
Zanesville, OH– This past Thursday the Blue Devils announced their 33rd head football in TJ Carper.
Carper spoke about what made the Zanesville head coaching job so attractive to him.
“Well you know most looking at the history is Zanesville man there’s a lot of tradition here. There’s a lot of great athletes that came from here there’s a lot of great athletes that are still here you know and just being apart of something that is bigger than myself,” said Carper. “Who wouldn’t take a job here you know you look at everything this job use to be and use to mean to people here in the area. You know it was an opportunity for me to take and come in and try to get out turned around try restore some of the things that people want to accomplish here.”
Coach Carper was able to take a Vinton High School team that only won just 38 of its previous 164 games and hadn’t had a winning season since 2004, to a 22-11 record with state playoff appearances in each season. He hopes to bring those wining ways to Zanesville after seeing the potential of the 2024 team.
“You know just looking at the kids and their mentality right now they want to win so I think just starting with how can we do the right things to win I look back at a couple games they’re in it at halftime and in the third quarter and then they end up losing in the 4th you know so just trying to over come some of the mental blocks how to overcome some of the adversity that they are going through in their life and taking that because they want to win.
Carper says he takes pride in being a developmental coach.
“I think just coming in and being patient being patient and giving them time to do things that they’re great at you know and just taking everything that they maybe good at and mixing it in with others. I think starting at the middle school levels are big and getting them to understand hey this is how we are going to do things and this is how it will be done in a systematic way will help achieve greatness not only coming up but for years to come,” explained Carper.
