John Barker Carpenter

Who is John Barker Carpenter?

John Barker Carpenter was a college athletics coach and administrator.

He attended Penn State and graduated in 1960 with a master's degree in education. Carpenter served on the staff and faculty at Gettysburg College from 1958 to 1966 as a teacher, coach and director of intramurals.

He was athletic director and coached 23 seasons at Rider University from 1966 to 1989. He is Rider's all-time winningest coach with a record of 292 wins and 328 losses and took one team to the NCAA Tournament.

As the athletic director, Carpenter brought Rider into NCAA Division I athletics in the 1967–68 season as a member of the Middle Atlantic Conference. He was the driving force behind an athletic department that grew from five to 16 sports. He was one of the 12 founders of the East Coast Conference as the group pulled away from the MAC in 1974. Regular opponents included three of the Philadelphia Big Five schools: Saint Josephs, La Salle, and Temple.

Fifteen years after helping to form the East Coast Conference, Carpenter became the conference's first full-time commissioner when he took that office on July 1, 1989.