The Pampa Harvesters will have a new head wrestling coach when they take the mat in the winter.
Coach Carter Robinson was recently named the squad’s new coach and will also be the defensive coordinator for the football team.
Robinson came up to Pampa with Athletic Director Cody Robinson and played football at Hardin-Simmons. After college, he worked under Coach Seth Parr at Lubbock-Coronado coaching football and wrestling.
“That’s how I got into wrestling,” Robinson said. “I was the head girls coach and go to work my way up. Learned wrestling right there. I learned under Coach Mark Snow and learned a lot from him. The past two years and in 2019 I had seven girls on the team and all seven made it to Regionals. In 2020 I had seven girls on the team and six made it to Regionals.”
Robinson is excited to take over a young Pampa program and said having come from a program running the girls program, they won’t be an afterthought.
“A lot of times if you’re a boys only coach taking over the entire program the girls are thrown on the back-burner,” Robinson said. “I’m excited that I’ve coached girls before and they won’t be left on the back-burner.
“As for the whole program, we are in one of the best districts in the state so I’m excited because to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. So we will get to compete against teams like Randall, Dumas and the best.”
The expectation is wrestling should start at the normal time in November, but UIL hasn’t made the official announcement yet. Regardless, Coach Robinson said the Harvesters will work hard to get ready.
“We’re going to work hard, go out every day and do lots of drill work,” Robinson said. “It’ll be in your weight class, but we are going to work hard.”
So far, Pampa will have nine returning wrestlers from last year, but is still planning to meet with the full team to find out who will be returning. One of the challenges facing the Harvesters will be that there isn’t a junior high program.
“A lot of the ones that are freshmen have either done very little, or not at all,” Robinson said. “There’s a lot of teaching in that first year as a freshmen. But it’s also exciting to get some raw talent that might not know what they are doing but they are athletic, want to do it and want to compete.”
Robinson is married to Megan, who will be a speech therapist at Pampa ISD.
“The community has been overwhelmingly accepting of us,” Robinson said. “Everyone has been super-nice and we couldn’t ask for a better introduction to the town.”
