“I left a message for Mike,” said Carter, “telling him to be sure the boys are ready. They can’t come out here to Washington and let me down.”

An all-state tailback at Wilson, Carter in 1979 became the first highly recruited Washington high school athlete to renounce a scholarship offer from Huskies coach Don James. And though Notre Dame was tethered to its typical coast-to-coast schedule in those days, Carter never got the opportunity to face the team he grew up watching.

It’s among his few regrets about a college career that produced the fifth-highest rushing total in school history – 2,409 yards, more than George Gipp, Jerome Bettis or Ricky Watters.

Highlights? There was a 254-yard effort against Michigan State, and the day he scored the only touchdown in a 1980 victory at Alabama – where Paul “Bear” Bryant was winding up his 35th season as a college head coach – and a trip to the 1981 Sugar Bowl to face Georgia. Carter’s 109 yards helped Notre Dame stay in the game, but the undefeated Bulldogs held on to win the national championship.

That sour Sugar memory doesn’t trouble Carter as much as any of the four defeats to Southern California, the last of which, in 1982, was decided on a touchdown with 45 seconds remaining. It left Notre Dame with a 6-4-1 record and turned up the heat on embattled ex-high school coach Gerry Faust, whose program delivered 25 draft choices to the NFL but won only 30 of 57 games.

The Fighting Irish teams of the early 1980s are recalled as underachievers, which cost Faust his job after his five-year contract expired in 1985. Carter defied the trend.

“I knew I wasn’t the best athlete, but I was always in better shape than anybody else,” he said Thursday in Puyallup, where he works as executive director of the Mel Korum Family YMCA. “That’s what allowed me to achieve all those years at Notre Dame. Greg Bell was a first-round draft choice. Greg played behind me. So did Allen Pinkett, another great athlete. He played behind me because of the work ethic I had.”

After college, Carter tried to hook on as a free agent with Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys, only to find his competitive edge gone.

“We had two weeks of camp with just the rookies, and I got through that, and then they started two-a-days with the veterans,” he said. “I look up and see Too Tall Jones throwing people around. Here I am, trying to make it as a running back – on a team that had Tony Dorsett. I lost my desire.

“I’m not sure if I started football too early – I began playing in the third grade – or if my college career caught up with me. I carried the ball 30, 40 times a game. I’m not saying the wear-and-tear affected me, but the desire was missing. And once you lose that desire for a moment, it’s gone forever.”

Carter found a roster spot with the Canadian Football League’s Calgary Roughriders for three seasons, then decided he was ready to begin the post-football phase of his life. A full-time position at the YMCA in downtown Tacoma turned into a more prominent position as CEO of the YMCA system in Kalamazoo, Mich. A year and a half ago, he moved his family back to Washington for a chance to oversee the Korum Family YMCA.

As Carter guided me on a tour through the bustling facility – membership is more than 21,000 strong, with an emphasis on the strong – he seemed to be recognized by every other patron. “Executive director” is an impressive title, but it’s inaccurate. Phil Carter is more like the mayor of the healthiest town on the planet.

“Look down there,” he said, gesturing to the basketball floor below a hallway window. We were watching a guy – he appeared to be in his early 20s – dribbling through an earnest but physically challenged defense, as nobody else on the court was beyond the second grade.

“I’ll guarantee you they’re not related,” Carter said. “That’s what happens here. Big kids interacting with little kids. Isn’t that cool?”

Carter still follows football, and unless Notre Dame is involved, he roots for both the Huskies and the Cougars, easily justifying the apparent conflict of interest.

“This is my state,” he said. “This is where I grew up. Washington developed me. Washington has been awesome to me. How can I ever be against a team from the state of Washington?”

Whatever fire Carter lost between his graduation from Notre Dame and the second wave of two-a-day practices with the Cowboys, he’s regained it. Along the way, he’s developed an admiration for those who survived the audition.

“The guys who make it in the pros, they all have something in common,” he said. “They love the game. That’s why I respect them so much. It’s all about loving the game, loving what you do.

“My friends ask me, ‘How can you go to the YMCA every day, work all those hours, do all those exercises?’ And my answer is simple: I love it.”

john.mcgrath @thenewstribune.com