Trakeing the Reins

LIKE ANY KID who’s held a golf club in their hands, Trake Carpenter envisioned a day when he would be able to play the game at the highest level— and like most, reality eventually came calling.

“Honestly, that probably came during the first qualifier I played in college,” said Carpenter, the new men’s coach at the University of Denver. “I grew up in a small town and was probably pretty sheltered—in life and in golf. And then you go to school and you’re at a Division I program (Ball State)…I thought I was pretty good, but I guess I just didn’t know the scope of a real college program and it opened my eyes.

“Everybody has a dream of playing on the PGA TOUR, but I saw the writing on the wall pretty early.”

Carpenter quickly transitioned into coaching, serving as an assistant at his alma mater, then moving on to the same role at Marquette and Stanford before coming aboard with the Pioneers in July. While those prior stops helped scratch his competitive itch, as he says, on a daily basis helping the guys who are still living that dream, moving into a head coaching position ups the ante quite a bit.

“Stanford is a place where you hang around as long as you can—the tournaments you’re playing in, the courses, the players you get to recruit, the people you meet—it’s all second to none,” he said. “It gave me a chance to see what it was like to push the bar really high, to see what was possible; I wasn’t looking to leave there; it was going to take a really great program and a really great school, and Denver was checking all the boxes.”

Carpenter was confronted with a huge challenge almost immediately, with the novel coronavirus scuttling the team’s Fall season. But Carpenter, a devotee of noted mental skills coach Brian Cain, says that while he ultimately would have preferred seeing his new charges in action, the lack of tournament play provided the opportunity to lay the groundwork for what he wanted his program to look like. Now that the Spring season has actually started (Denver finished in a tie for 10th in its first tournament, the Arizona Invitational), Carpenter says the unexpected break might help the Pioneers in the long run.

“It’s on me to set the standards and culture; I’ve been with programs whose coaches were there for a long time and I was learning their way and trying to add a little bit of me here and there. Now it’s putting together all those little puzzle pieces and kind of making it what I want it to be.

“Brian has worked with so many great teams and great coaches and we’ve talked a lot about what works with great teams and programs and athletes in other sports—now it’s up to me to piece all that together to make up the culture of Denver Golf now.” denverpioneers.com

---

This article was also featured in the Spring Issue of Colorado AvidGolfer.

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.