Riverview Football
- searcylivingads
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Jennifer Webb
Ten-year-old Chuck Carr could hardly contain his excitement. He and his buddy, Robbie, had recorded the 1987 Super Bowl on the VCR. Their favorite team, the Broncos, were playing. They stayed up all night, watching it play-by-play. They stopped and reviewed the footage along the way, discussing everything. They were heartbroken that the Broncos lost to the Giants, but when the morning sun came, they were out in the yard running every route they thought the Broncos should have won.
They both simply loved the game.
Robbie’s parents drove him to Heber Springs to attend school so that he could play. Chuck’s parents had to work long hours, so he rode the bus with his brother and sisters to Rosebud Schools. Much to his dismay, they did not have a football program at the time. Chuck never saw the field as a high school football player.
He graduated in 1994, joined the United States Navy in 1995, and got married when he and his wife were 18 and 19. After four years of marriage, they had been blessed to add three kids to their family.
Chuck still loved football, but he felt God tugging on his heart. By the time he was 23, they were getting heavily involved in church. He felt the pull and call to be around young people outside of the church. He wanted to be around kids whereever they were.
He started with a peewee football team and loved it. He told the head coach at Siloam Springs High School one day that if he could do anything for the rest of his life, he would coach football. The coach’s first question was, “Where did you play?”
With a sinking heart, Chuck answered that he had never played at all. “You’ll never coach.” He went on to explain that at the time, football coaches were hired based on who they knew, and often hired only former players. “There are other ways you can get involved.”
After that conversation, Chuck decided that it was more important to work with kids than coach football, putting his coaching dreams on a shelf. By the time Chuck was 29, he pursued a degree in ministry, surrendering to the call.
In 2006, he landed a job in Senath, MO, as a youth minister. “This is it,” he thought, “ I have a desire to serve the Lord and take care of my family. Football was just the way that it got started.”
In 2009, they moved to Texas when he was blessed to accept an associate pastor position. He sat down with the superintendent of the local school and asked, “What can I do to help?” Chuck’s son played football, and he continued to be involved as a parent. The associate pastor position moved into a senior pastor position. His heart was always about reaching the kids and the parents through the kids.
By 2017, the church where he worked had grown to around 200 people. On the outside, everything seemed to be going right. But on the inside, something was gnawing at him. Pastoring didn’t feel right anymore. “Should I leave the pulpit?” The question would not leave his mind.
“Can I talk to you?” the elementary school principal asked him one day. “I hope you take this the right way, but have you ever considered being a teacher and coaching at the high school level?” There it was, God was giving him the answer to the question that he had not dared to voice to anyone.
A few months later, he told his friend, Evan, over the phone, “I think it’s time. I don’t know how much longer I can preach. I can’t shake this idea that I’m supposed to be coaching.”
“How serious are you?” his friend asked.
“Totally serious.”
“See you in Buffalo at 3 this afternoon. They are looking for a new football coach.”
Chuck sat across from Brandon Houston, the head football coach. He laid it all on the table, with the faith that he was too puny to mess up God’s plan if it was meant to be. “I have zero experience,” Chuck confessed. “But I’m a good learner, hard worker, love kids, and I love football . . . but have never played.”
When he got the call that he was hired, Brandon told him, “I can teach you football, but I can’t teach what you’ve got in your heart.” And just like that, God gave Chuck the job that others told him was impossible to get.
He told a mentor of his, “I can’t imagine doing this.” It was a dream that had come full circle.
“I can’t imagine you NOT doing this,” his mentor replied. “ God put this in your heart 20 years ago, and the door’s opened to you, not because you’re a great football guy, but because of the way you ministered to a family, and it meant enough to them that they wanted you to minister to the kids in their community.”
That first year in Buffalo, TX, they set a school record for victories and made it to the third round of playoffs.
In the next six years, he coached teams in several schools, consistently making the playoffs. Those schools included Searcy High School with Coach Clark for two years, then he went back to Texas to help a struggling team for two years, before finally settling at Riverview in 2024.
“These kids come from where I came from. I love them and call them my riverbottom kids. These guys and girl that we coach want to be a part of something—something positive, something they can reach and dream for. I feel like that’s why God chose here and now. He has a message of this dream that He put in my heart and others told me was out of my reach. I continued to be faithful to God everywhere He put us, and He’s continued to honor that.”
- Chuck Carr, Head Coach, Riverview Raiders High School Football
Chuck always comes back to the “why.” He’s always been a passionate person, and his players know that he won’t ask them to do something they can’t do. They may not realize they are capable when they start, but each mark along the way builds their confidence. They buy into his belief in them. It’s an approach that Chuck believes is a biblical approach to raising young men and women.
Many of Chuck’s friends have asked him if he wanted to wait for a better opportunity to open up. For Chuck, there is no better place because this is where he feels like God led him, and he says he’s here to stay. He has a big heart for the kids and wants to see them walking around campus with their chests puffed out a little bit because they are proud of something they have accomplished.
His story is just one more example of how God makes a way when others say a dream is impossible. One person can make a huge difference when he or she seeks what the Lord desires.
Read the full issue below.
