Prairie Grove Native To Be Inducted Into Coaches Hall of Fame

FAYETTEVILLE -- Don Carnahan didn't focus on just one sport during his days growing up in Prairie Grove.

Instead, he participated in just about everything.

Little did he know at the time the sport that perhaps had the fewest resources in his high school years would end up as the spotlight to a 40-year hall of fame coaching career.

"We didn't even have our own track when I was at Prairie Grove," Carnahan said. "There weren't very many schools who had tracks back then. And we didn't have a cross country team.

"I coached a lot of things because back when I started you were just a coach. But I think what attracted me to track and cross country was the individual accomplishments. You can be the slowest guy or girl at the meet and you can still meet your own personal goals, and there's a lot of satisfaction in that."

Carnahan graduated from Prairie Grove in 1963 and attended the University of Arkansas, where he graduated in 1967. He took his first coaching job out of college at Russellville.

"The way I got hired is the superintendent who hired me had been my superintendent at Prairie Grove," Carnahan said. "He knew me, so that's how I got to Russellville."

Carnahan, like many coaches in that time, was asked to cross over and handle many sports. He helped out in everything from swimming, tennis, basketball and football. But quickly he found his calling in track and field and cross country.

In 40 years with the Cyclones and Lady Cyclones -- before retiring seven years ago -- Carnahan won 11 state championships and had 12 state runner-up finishes. In 2001-02, the Russellville boys won a cross country, indoor and outdoor track and field state championship triple crown.

Carnahan was inducted the National High School Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Arkansas Track Hall of Fame in 2003. Today, he adds another as he will be inducted into the Arkansas High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

"Russellville had a good tradition in track even before I got there," Carnahan said. "We just kept the tradition going and built it up stronger. Most of those years we were in what they now call the 7A-West. And when you were competing against those schools, the Fayetteville's and Fort Smith Schools, and winning at that level, you were seeing the top competition."

Carnahan's induction into the Arkansas High School Coaches Hall of Fame is the not the first for his family. His sister, Mary Frances Kretschmar, was inducted in 2008, after 36 years as a girls basketball coach at Fayetteville and Lincoln.

His brother-in-law, former Fayetteville boys' basketball coach Joe Kretschmar, was also inducted in 2007.

"It's a pretty neat deal," Mary Frances Kretschmar said. "We're the first brother and sister to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And when you add in Joe, we have the most members of one family in the Hall of Fame."

Carnahan kept a close eye on his sister's coaching stint at Fayetteville, and even got an up close view of perhaps the most memorable win of her career.

"She did a great job and won those back-to-back state championships at Fayetteville," Carnahan said. "I was the official scorekeeper for the eight-overtime game she won over Mountain Home in the state finals. I kept running out of room in the book in that game, but I was really proud of her."

Carnahan is head of the Arkansas heptathlon/decathlon and officiates local and state track meets now that he's retired from coaching. He also makes his way back up to his native Prairie Grove more often these days.

"A lot more now than I used to when I was coaching," Carnahan said. "Coaching was a year-round, full-time job. But I get back up there to visit family a lot more now."

Sports on 07/11/2014