December 2024/January 2025
Kevin Wright, one of Indiana’s most accomplished high school football coaches, was officially announced as Carmel High School’s new head coach last month. Wright steps into the role previously held by his former assistant, John Hebert, who resigned last month after a successful ten-year tenure.
We had the opportunity to speak with Coach Wright about his coaching journey and his vision for the Greyhounds as they head into the upcoming season.
Building Upon a Legacy of Success
Under Hebert’s leadership, Carmel secured two Class 6A state championships in 2016 and 2019. This coaching shift marks a homecoming for Wright, who originally led the Greyhounds from 2010 to 2014, guiding the team to a Class 5A state title in 2011 and consecutive state runner-up finishes in 2013 and 2014. His efforts resulted in an impressive 54-11 overall record before he departed for IMG Academy, a rising national powerhouse in Florida.
At IMG Academy, Wright played a pivotal role in building the fledgling program into a national juggernaut, amassing a 44-2 record and securing five consecutive top-10 national rankings. After his tenure at IMG, Wright transitioned to collegiate coaching, serving as the tight ends coach at Indiana University from 2020 to 2023 under Tom Allen. Most recently, he returned to his roots, assisting his father, Bud Wright, Indiana’s all-time winningest high school football coach, as associate head coach at Sheridan High School. Wright’s decorated career includes leading Warren Central to three consecutive state championships from 2003 to 2005, further cementing his legacy in Indiana high school football.
Inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 2022, Wright brings a career record of 229-65, including four IHSAA state titles, back to Carmel. His return signals a new chapter for the Greyhounds, one rich with championship pedigree and deep local ties.
A Period of Professional and Personal Evolution
Wright grew up in Sheridan with four siblings. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have two kids—a 22-year-old daughter, who’s working at the Simon Cancer Research Center downtown after graduating from IU, and a 19-year-old son, who’s currently a freshman at IU. Wright expressed that he is happy to be back in the area, having moved to Carmel in late July of 2024. His wife took a job as an administrator in Westfield schools, bringing them closer to home.
“We decided where we are in life, we wanted to be centrally located back by family, and we took a leap of faith and moved back to Hamilton County,” Wright shared. “There’s very few places like it in the country from an overall quality of living standpoint and what it has to offer.”
When asked what the main takeaways were from IMG, Wright said, “It was an opportunity to build something that had not been built like that before. Over five years, we went from 60-plus players to over 180. I learned the business of athletics on a different level [at IMG]. It was a tremendous opportunity and a huge learning experience. I think the biggest takeaway was the development of the total athlete, which I have always believed in. As a parent, having the experience of exposing my kids to a multicultural environment and people from all around the world… it was very inclusive. I was in the right place at the right time and am very fortunate to have that opportunity to have gone there.”
Wright continued, “I was blessed and really enjoyed the time in Bloomington, who obviously [had] an unbelievable year this year, and it was fun to watch. I think that time gave me the opportunity to coach at the highest level of college football and to be around some incredible minds to study the game from. My time there really evolved my football IQ and helped me continue to grow. It was an unexpected turn of events that I ended up back in Sheridan, and it was definitely a unique opportunity to work with [my dad] and to reconnect with the community. We ended up winning the sectional, which was special, and I can look back and say that was pretty awesome that particular door opened.”
A Return to the Greyhounds’ Sideline
“It’s a little bit of coming full circle,” Wright said. “When people ask what the community can expect, they can expect us to take full advantage of this opportunity to reset and refocus. I understand that this is the most competitive era of high school football, especially in central Indiana, that Carmel [football] has ever experienced. No longer can we just show up and win, and there’s really no game on the calendar that’s an assumed ‘W.’”
Wright added, “We’ve got to be prepared every single week and reset the mindset of everyone so that we understand that to be successful, we’re going to have to get back to doing what made Carmel successful—we have to work hard, be accountable and care about each other. We have to be accountable in every phase of what we’re doing, whether it’s on the football field, in the classroom or the weight room. We have to be accountable to each other, and have to be strong physically and mentally. We have to make sure that [we] care more about the guy next to us than we do our own individual stats and who’s recruiting me. I used the phrase, ‘We can’t be a program that is OK with losing because if you’re OK with losing, that’s what you’re going to get.’ You’re hard-pressed to look at any entity at Carmel High School that doesn’t have extremely high expectations, standards and goals, and that’s our goal going forward—to keep on keeping on.”
Photography // Submitted