FORT KENT, Maine — Retired coach Terre Carpenter, founder of Fort Kent Community High School’s soccer programs, has established a scholarship program for athletes who participate in the sports he coached.
Carpenter first came to Fort Kent in 1963, which is a time when Aroostook County only had four soccer programs. In 1964, the principal tasked Carpenter with setting up the school’s first soccer program.
The Fort Kent Warriors had a modest start; they had three wins and five losses. The school did not yet have its own field. Instead, the teams played on a field where Acadia Credit Union is now located.
Eventually, they hit 60 wins, zero losses and six ties. They also reached the state finals against Gorham in the early 1970s.
Carpenter’s dedication to the Fort Kent school’s sports and his accomplishments in school athletics from the 1960s through the 1980s is still talked about in the community. The new scholarship program is an extension of that dedication.
“Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s Fort Kent made it to numerous state championships,” said John Kaleta, principal of Fort Kent Community High School and Valley Rivers Middle Schools. “They had an incredible reputation as a soccer powerhouse.”
In the late 1960s, Carpenter also started coaching the girls basketball team during their first season. Kaleta said Carpenter had an easier time coaching this team than the boys.
“[He said] they were better listeners and harder workers,” Kaleta said. “He went on to coach the ladies for about 18 years.”
About 10 years later, he started coaching boys varsity baseball.
Carpenter spent about a quarter of a century at CHS, retiring after the 1987-88 school year, which was Kaleta’s first year teaching there. Kaleta said he’d heard countless stories of Carpenter’s coaching before even coming to work at the school.
Carpenter and his son Dan approached Keleta last September about starting a scholarship program that would allow him to give back to the community. Through this program, Carpenter gives three $1,000 scholarships to students in each of the three sports he coached at CHS.
On Aug. 11, he gave out scholarships to Larissa Daigle, girls basketball; Nathan Voisine, boys soccer; and Ethan Raymond, boys baseball.
Kaleta thanked all past and present Fort Kent Warrior athletes and coaches, and said their spirit lives on through gestures like this.
“[It’s] so incredible that one individual was there at the beginning of two of our favorite warrior legacies,” he said.
