Hutchinson CC

Steve Carpenter is the first full-time sports information director in the long and storied history of the Hutchinson Community College athletic department. He is now in his 20th year as SID.

Carpenter came to HutchCC after a 17-year journalism career that spanned four newspapers in two states.

He was the interim sports information director for the Blue Dragons in the spring of 2004, while also working as administrative assistant for the Blue Dragon women’s basketball team.

Carpenter oversaw the reconstruction of the athletic department’s web site in his first years as SID as well as improved overall coverage of all 12 intercollegiate sports.

For the past 14 seasons, Carpenter has served as the play-by-play voice of Blue Dragon Baseball and Softball on HutchCC’s Internet game broadcasts. He was also the play-by-play voice of Blue Dragon women’s basketball from 2007-09 to 2014-15 and returned to the play-by-play mic for Blue Dragon from 2019-20 to 2022-23. He has also done play-by-play for volleyball and women’s soccer and has been an analyst for football and men’s basketball.

His latest project is continuing to grow the Blue Dragon Sports Network, the Blue Dragons’ video streaming platform.

In April of 2020, Carpenter received the prestigious Mary Ellen Leicht NJCAA Service Award in recognition for his years of assisting the Jayhawk Conference, Region VI and the NJCAA at a multitude of regional and national events over his tenure at Hutchinson Community College.

Prior to joining the Blue Dragon Athletic Department, Carpenter was the sports editor of The Hutchinson News from 1995 to 2003.

At The News, Carpenter covered Blue Dragon athletics, taking over as full-time football and volleyball beat writer in 1997 and the entire Blue Dragon/junior college beat in 2001.

In his eight-plus years at The News, Carpenter won numerous Kansas Press Association and Harris Enterprises awards for sports writing, column writing and page design.

He led a staff of five other writers who also won awards on a yearly basis for their work.

Carpenter orchestrated The News’ yearly coverage of the NJCAA national basketball tournament and other events such as the Big 12 men’s golf championship, The Hutchinson Nationals auto races and countless state, national and world events at Fun Valley and Hobart-Detter Field.

The crowning achievement of Carpenter’s tenure at The News was the coverage of the 2002 U.S. Women’s Open Golf Championship at Prairie Dunes Country Club. Carpenter’s staff – which grew to 15 writers and photographers for the event – flawlessly covered the biggest event ever to take place in the state of Kansas at that time.

Carpenter started his journalism career writing sports part-time at the Tecumseh Chieftain in Tecumseh, Nebraska, in 1985.

He became the sports editor of the Clay County News, a weekly publication in Sutton, Nebraska, in 1987 and spent four years there. In September of 1991, Carpenter was hired a sportswriter at the North Platte Telegraph in North Platte, Nebraska. Thirteen months later, he was promoted to sports editor.

While at The Telegraph, Carpenter covered University of Nebraska athletics as well as Denver Broncos football and Colorado Rockies baseball. But it was during his tenure in North Platte that he started to develop a passion for junior college athletics as the beat writer for the Mid-Plains Community College Knights volleyball and men’s and women’s basketball teams.

Carpenter was born on April 17, 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska.

He spent most of his younger years growing up in Tecumseh, Nebraska, graduating from Tecumseh High School in 1983. He earned a pair of degrees from Gateway Electronics Institute of Omaha, Nebraska, in 1985 and 1986.

His wife, Tina, also a Nebraska native, is a Hutchinson Community College graduate.

The couple has four children: Christopher (wife Yvonna), Andrew (he and his wife, Samantha. have three daughters, Karen, Hope and Parker), Stephanie (she and husband Justin Doyle have a daughter, Peyton, and a son, Jameson), and daughter Samantha.

Carpenter coached youth or American Legion baseball and youth softball for 31 years. He now helps with the Hutchinson Monarchs summer league baseball team in the summer.