Zachary Wood is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Desert Edge High School for AZPreps365.com

Entering this season as a top-ranked 5A football team, the Desert Edge Scorpions are full of confidence after the success they have had with co-head coaches, Mark and Marcus Carter.

The Carters have coached Desert Edge for the past two seasons. During that span, they are undefeated in the 5A Desert West Conference, and hold a regular-season record of 18-4.

Co-head coaching is rare, especially when the coaches are also twin brothers, but their chemistry is shown throughout games and their leadership has impacted the change and culture at the West Valley desert school.

“The culture that we’ve built at Desert Edge — you know, Desert Edge has become a destination school,” Mark Carter said. “For Desert Edge, which was 4A the year before we got there, then we got to 5A, and now they’re trying to push us to 6, it just shows the growth of the program.”

After arriving during the height of the pandemic, the Carter brothers made their impact immediately. Desert Edge was coming off a 10-4 regular season, and the coaches took the team’s positives and raised the standards even further, but for the Carter brothers, football is not the most important thing. Providing high school students with tools for later success and influencing them to make good scholastic decisions for the future is why the Carter brothers have been so successful.

“I’m so proud we’ve sent double-digit kids to college every year we’ve been here,” Marcus Carter said. “That’s why we do it. My mom -- we couldn’t afford to play football when we were younger, and so I never wanted money to be an issue for kids who wanted to fulfill their dreams and play at the higher level.”

Sending high school athletes to higher forms of education is most important to this head coaching team. Desert Edge provides students with opportunities and resources to advance to the next level of their careers, but more importantly, to set up young players for a bright future for success.

“When we have the opportunity to coach -- advocate for these young gentlemen, send them to college ready and prepared to be young men, start their careers off debt-free … They can buy a house, they can be a great husband and a great father, that’s what we do it for,” Marcus Carter said. “That’s been the best thing for me. The wins and losses are cool, but that’s for the kids. For us, it’s sending the kids to college and them coming back and pouring it back into the community that served them.”

Desert Edge athletic director Jason Linn was excited to have the Carter brothers join the staff. He understood what they stood for, not only for the athletes, but for the students and community of Goodyear.

“We took a chance with them, and it paid off,” Linn said. “What they’ve done here is incredible.”