Carpenter builds a Greenville High legend

Travis Carpenter has not been blessed with a lot of free time during his senior year at Greenville High School. And that is exactly the way he likes it.

Carpenter has earned varsity letters in five different sports in 1990-91 while competing as a member of the Lakers’ soccer, cross country, basketball, baseball and track teams.

When Carpenter was not suited up in a Greenville uniform, he was applying himself in the classroom. He boasts a 96 academic average and is the valedictorian of the senior class.

“He has tremendous character,” said Ron Pelletier, cross country coach and a teacher at Greenville. “He’s not full of himself (conceited), but he has got the courage to develop his potential in all areas despite the kind of peer pressure sometimes shown to somebody who has just got talent in every area like he does.”

Despite a grueling schedule of classes and athletic events, Carpenter has proven himself the consummate student-athlete, excelling in all his endeavors.

“Lots of times, I wouldn’t come home until 7 or 8 at night,” Carpenter said. “If I had to write a paper or do my school work, I had to keep putting it off. I’d have to spend a couple real long nights a week sometimes (to catch up).”

Carpenter said it was worth all the late nights to be able to compete in athletics.

“I love to play sports; the team competition and sometimes just the individual stuff,” Carpenter said. “I like soccer better than anything else. Soccer was great.”

Carpenter, a 5-foot-10, 140-pounder earned All-Eastern Maine Class D honors as a midfielder for the Lakers last fall, serving as field general.

In between, Carpenter found time to compete on Greenville’s cross country team and was consistently among the Lakers’ top three runners.

Carpenter had to convince school officials to allow him and a few teammates to play more than one sport. The only stipulation was Carpenter had to decide on one priority sport, which meant that if two sports events coincided, he would automatically compete in the priority sport.

Carpenter suffered a bad ankle sprain during the Lakers’ semifinal soccer game and it bothered him during most of the basketball season. As a point guard, he was the Greenville floor leader and a co-captain.

“He was a smart player,” said Lakers basketball coach Carroll Smith. “He’d go out and do pretty much whatever you’d ask him to do. He rebounded pretty well for a person his size and was a real heady player.”

Carpenter said basketball was the most challenging for him.

“I was always the small guy out there,” he said. “I had to work harder if I wanted to make it known that I was out there on the floor at all.”

When spring rolled around, Carpenter was back to doing double duty on the baseball and track squads. Carpenter was a standout on the diamond, where he played mostly in the outfield. He also did stints at second base, shortstop, pitcher and was pressed into service as the catcher late in the season.

The Lakers co-captain led the squad with a .534 batting average, 31 runs scored, and a .559 on-base percentage. Carpenter, the team MVP, stole 26 bases and struck out only twice.

“He was the kid who was most versatile,” said Greenville baseball coach Al McPherson. “He’s an aggressive hitter and he can run like a son of a gun. He’s so smart that he knows the situations. He always knows whatHe’s so smart that he knows the situations. He always knows what to do at the right time.”

Despite his relatively small build, Carpenter drew from instinct and intelligence to make the most of his physical tools.

After running the 400 meters as a junior, Carpenter switched to a more technical event, the 300 intermediate hurdles this spring. Although he had never competed in it before, he finished tied for third in the Eastern Maine Class C championship meet.

“Truly, you couldn’t think of a better model as a scholar-athlete than Travis,” Pelletier said. “He’s just multitalented. He has that natural sprinting endurance and he had such wonderful instincts for the hurdles.”

His athletic career is over, at least for now, and Carpenter is concentrating on his future. He will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study either architecture or engineering.

Carpenter, a National Honor Society member, said he would like to play soccer at MIT, but will wait until he has a year of academics under his belt before giving it a try.

“I’m going to miss that,” Carpenter said of competing. “It’s going to be tough, especially when I come back to Greenville and watch basketball, baseball and soccer games.”