TEXAS NEIGHBORS | WINTER 2021 Family, football and farming One West Texas family’s careers have taken them from the cotton field to the football field and back again By Jennifer Dorsett Field Editor Farming is closely intertwined with family. The majority of farms in the U.S. are family farms, and there’s a special bond between genera-tions as they work the land and raise animals together. And for Don Carthel, a Parmer County Farm Bureau member and cotton farmer, football is also closely intertwined with family. Don is a retired FCS division (formerly called I-AA) football coach whose son, Colby, followed in his footsteps. “I grew up in Friona on my family’s farm. I wanted to be a football coach instead of a farmer, so I went that route,” Don said. Don played football at Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU). After graduating college and coaching at the high school level and as a coor-dinator for a university, he accepted his first head coaching job at Lub -bock Christian College (now Lubbock Christian University). In 1985, he became the head coach at his alma mater, ENMU. But the call of the land never quite worked its way out of Don’s soul. In 1991, after ENMU won the Lone Star Conference Championship, he went back to his agricultural roots. “I coached until my kids were starting high school and went back to farming in Friona with my dad,” Don said. “A farm life is a good life for a family, and I wanted them to have some of those same experiences. My daughter had a hoeing crew and ran the spray rig, and Colby helped on the farm, driving tractors and doing all the things farmers have to do to get the work done.” Colby credits his success on the field to the lessons he learned in the cotton field. “People always want to know where I got my drive from, and I always say a lot of the success I’ve had in life and in coaching is because I was raised on a farm,” he said. “I love farming. If I weren’t coaching, I’d be farming.” After Colby graduated high school in 1995, he headed to Angelo State University to play college football. And like his father before him, he began a coaching career after graduation. Colby’s career started at Abilene Christian University (ACU), where he was the defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator. But what happened next wasn’t the typical farm-to-school-and-back-again story. That’s because after Colby and his sister had graduated high school, their dad was back on the gridiron. Don did some volunteer coaching at ACU before being hired as the head coach and general manager of the Amarillo Dusters, an indoor football team of the Intense Football League (IFL). After a successful 15-3 season and clenching the IFL championship with the Dusters in 2004, Don was hired as the head coach at nearby West Texas A&M University (WTAMU) for the upcoming 2005 season. In 2006, Don named Colby defensive coordinator at WTAMU, bring-ing father and son together as professionals for the first time. “I volunteered at ACU while he was there to help out, but it was really a blessing to have that time we spent together at WTAMU,” Don said. It was a special time for both, Colby reflected. “We were there for seven years together and had a great run,” he said. “We had the most successful football team in state of Texas at that time.” While at WTAMU, Don took the WTAMU Buffaloes to their first Lone Star Conference Championship in almost 20 years. He left WTAMU in WWW.TEXASFARMBUREAU.ORG