The track athlete from the small town of Elizabeth, Colorado has been excelling and competing at his highest level this year.
Scott Carter wasn’t highly recruited coming out of high school, but the University of Wyoming was the only D1 team to recruit him his junior year.
“I wasn’t a very strong jumper my junior year so Wyoming was the only DI program that recruited me,” Carter said. “I signed on my first signing date my junior year with Wyoming so no one else could recruit me.”
Once his senior year came along he started getting recruited more heavily from school like the University of Kansas, Indiana and UCLA, but Wyoming stuck close with him and he decided to not un-sign.
“Coach Howe is what kept me from keeping my decision to come here,” Carter said. “He was the coach that showed me he believed I could be a DI jumper before I really had the marks to.”
Carter has been at UW for five years now and has had some up and downs throughout his career, but it hasn’t slowed him down.
“I’ve had some ups and downs and during my freshman year I had to get surgery on my ankle, so that took me a couple years to recover from,” Carter said. “My freshman year I came back from that surgery and was not very competitive and my marks didn’t line up where they were in high school. It really meant a lot to me that Coach Berryhill and the coaching staff still believed in what I could do and never showed any doubt in my abilities during that time.”
He is posting the best numbers of his career so far this year from his previous four years.
“The past two years I was kind of a ticking time bomb. Last year I had a great year, but the coaches decided to redshirt me for the outdoor season because my body was a little bit banged up,” Carter said. “So another year under my belt under Coach Howe’s training and another year of really paying attention to my diet and my health has really helped me with what I’ve been able to accomplish so far this year.”
Carter said he really attributes his diet to what he has been able to do so far this year and the marks he has been able to put up.
“About two years ago I was about 15 pounds heavier than what I should be,” Carter said. “So now that I have lost he weight I needed to lose, keeping it off is just not eating fast food, eating lean meats and a lot of veggies and eating the right foods that will give me the energy to go out and compete at the highest level on a day to day basis.”
He came to UW to be a triple jumper and that is his main event, but he also competes in the long jump and the 60-meter hurdles. Carter is excelling in his main event, but also has been putting up big numbers in his other two events.
“I would honestly say I am excelling in all three events this year,” Carter said. “I ran under 8 seconds at Indoor Conference in the 60-meter hurdles, I was one jump away from winning the conference meet for indoor. So I’ve really been happy with all my performances across the board for all my events I’ve competed in.”
Carter said he has big goals for the rest of the outdoor season and with the way he has been competing so far, he is on pace to reach what he has always dreamed of.
“My goals for the rest of the season are to compete really well at Outdoor Conference and score a lot of points for my team and for the University,” Carter said. “Then I want to become an All-American in the triple jump and stand on the podium in Eugene, Oregon on June 8. That’s my biggest goal and that’s what I’ve set these past two years of really hard training and really hard mental focus on is being able to stand on that podium.”
