SOUTH AMBOY, NJ–On Wednesday, GMC Hoops learned that Toms River East head coach, and former South Brunswick boys basketball head coach, Tom Carpenter, suffered a stroke over the summer, and is recovering. The site learned this information from Sherlon Christie of the Asbury Park Press, who has an article posted on this in his Inside the Paint blog.
Carpenter, who is taking the season off to recover, has been coaching at Toms River East for 13 years. Prior to that, he had coached at SBHS, where he took the fledgling Viking program in the mid-1980s, and made it into a perennial contender in the GMC. Coaching the likes of Donnell Lumpkin, Damon Lumpkin, Darius Lumpkin, Marc Moore, Jason Womble, Julian Tate, and Andres Oliverra, nearly reached the summit in Middlesex County back in the 1992-93 season. Ranked second in the pre-season polls, the Vikings, led by Tate and Oliverra, stumbled in the Prime Time Shootout against St. Joseph’s only to come back and stun then top ranked Perth Amboy in the semifinals of the GMCT at Rutgers. It was the next to last great Amboy team with the likes of Rah-Shun Roberts, Jose Urena, Adam Rivera, and Ronald Snipes.
On the cusp of winning the school’s first ever conference/county crown, the Vikings succumbed to a late St. Joseph’s rally to lose in overtime (57-54). Led by Womble, SBHS reached the semifinals of the GMCT again in 1996 only to lose to Piscataway and Delvon McMillan. After Carpenter’s departure, South Brunswick reached the GMCT semis three times: 2002, 2005, and 2007. However, Carpenter helped build the program as it grew from a small Group I/Group II program to a Group IV power.