San Jose State assistant running backs coach and recruiting coordinator Alonzo Carter supported the coaching community by creating the “West Coast Zoom clinic,” which created an atmosphere for minority football coaches to come together and provide feedback as well as learn different business strategies.
However, the initial idea of the clinic changed as civil unrest spread across the country. It became hard for Carter and his counterparts to steer away from the topic and thus, the clinic evolved into a discussion on having uncomfortable conversations and listening to minority voices.
“When I initially thought of the platform, I wanted to include minority coaches,” Carter said over the phone. “It was my way to create something on the West Coast so we can learn from each other. It grew from 35 to 300 coaches and we had to talk about what each coach is doing because of the social injustices going on.”
After speaking to other coaches, he said he realized there was a lot of prejudice toward minority assistant coaches. Using his platform as a coach at SJSU, Carter began discussing the racism some coaches face with his peers in the clinic.
“We wanted to create a dialogue. There’s a stigma that minority coaches are only good for recruiting, but we do so much more than that,” Carter said. “Coach Brennan has done a great job with diversity and been really good about getting in front of issues and having great conversations about it.”
Many of these Zoom calls led him to think about how his own story and these clinic discussions could uplift his community and other coaches.
“I wanted to take all that, and give them a platform to share those experiences and be uplifting,” Carter said.
Much of what Carter emphasized was using a platform to uplift the Black community during this time and teach student-athletes to do the same.
“One big thing when athletes face hardships is that they want to be heard and you should teach them how to use their platform to speak out and tell their truth. Listen to my truth. Listen to my pain,” Carter said.
One SJSU student-athlete who used his platform to promote community activism was men’s basketball junior guard Caleb Simmons. Simmons, along with SJSU women’s soccer senior defender Natasha Harris and senior midfielder Darrian Reed, organized Athletes4CHNGES, an event that raised $78,000 for Black Lives Matter.
The event brought together student-athletes from around the world as they ran, walked or biked 8.46 miles or exercised for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time that George Floyd was suffocated while being detained by Minneapolis police officers.
“Student-athletes are fortunate enough to have a platform with a wide reach,” Simmons said over text. “This country stands on liberty, freedom and justice for all and it’s never applied to Black people. We have to continue to be another voice to help change the narrative.”
Simmons and Carter’s call for a change of narrative for oppressed minorities echoed in their fight against injustices in their work.
“Teach your children to use their platform and not fall into the ‘I can’t do anything’ mentality. Make change and flip the narrative,” Carter said. “We have to hear each other out and that’s the beauty of these Zoom meetings and we use that at our universities.”
In Carter’s position as SJSU’s assistant running backs coach and recruiting coordinator, he continues to leave a large impact, which seems apparent to those around him.
"From the moment Coach Carter walked into my office three years ago (2017), I knew he was going to have lifelong impacts on our student-athletes, coaches and staff,” Athletics Director Marie Tuite said in an email to the Daily. “Yes, he's a football coach; however, he is so much more. He's a servant leader of young men and to his core, he is a teacher of ‘life and hope.’ I'm proud to say I love this man and this Athletics Department is better because he is part of our fabric."
As he plans for the rest of summer’s clinics and next year’s in-person version at SJSU, he leaves students and student-athletes with a message for change.
“Let’s continue to make small steps, because you may not make a change overnight. Let’s continue on this journey,” Carter said. “You know what comes from small steps? Bigger steps, and those bigger steps lead to a journey and change.”
