River Sharks in action
Chris Carter was on his way back to the gym, completely empty handed and preparing himself to face a team that hadn’t been paid in several weeks. As the coach of the Tennessee River Sharks, his guys had traveled up to Cincinnati, got toasted, and came back with the promise of getting a few hundred dollars for their troubles. Team owner Jamie LaMunyon had promised Carter money would come.
“I go to the hotel (in Chattanooga after the game), and they’ve all checked out,” Carter said. “They are gone, and the guy that took me said ‘the guys are going to kill you.’ I could have sunk 30 feet into the ground, since those were guys who had played on my team before, and now they’re following me somewhere that’s not good. When I went back, the look on their face…..it was pretty bad then.”
Nowadays Chris Carter runs Grind Football in South Carolina, where he helps up-and-coming athletes hone their skills. But back in 2006, the UT-Chattanooga alum was the head coach of one of what he calls “a scam.” When Jamie LaMunyon came to East Ridge, she sold the coach and his players on a dream.
“I told the guys before the season they had the potential to be an arena team. That was a dream of mine, to turn it into an Arena team,” Carter said. “In my mind, I’m thinking “If I can get this team going, think of the opportunities I can create for other guys.”
On March 11, the River Sharks defeated a team from Monroe, La., 33-24, and LaMunyon was doubtlessly excited to see her team in action.
“I can hardly believe the season is already here, but we’re ready,” LaMunyon told Stan Crawley in a 2006 article for the Chattanoogan. “The Scenic City Dancers are going to be delightful. We’re going to have a lot of fun promotions and extras to entertain the fans and there’s going to be a great football game.”
Carter said LaMunyon told him he would have 10 percent ownership of the team, and told him the team was worth at least $250,000. Nowadays he laughs at what ended up being empty promises, but at the time, the 10 percent ownership promise was simply an excuse for LaMunyon to get gear for free. Because Carter was already involved in a pre-existing semi-pro team, he and his players already had the equipment and helmets they needed.
“They dangled the carrot in front of you, and it didn’t cost them anything,” Carter said. “Her thing was ‘Your 10 percent is that you have to come up with all of the equipment.’”
“I told her the that all the guys got the equipment, and for the jerseys, one of the guys on the team had a body shop, and the guy painted all the helmets and logos. It didn’t cost them not a dime. This guy and these guys got a dream, so let’s see what we can get out of them.”
Carter said the free gear wasn’t a big deal at first, since the initial games were played in East Ridge. But by even the second game, cracks were starting to show in the operation. While the River Sharks website no longer exists, it still lives on thanks to the Wayback Machine. Because of this beautiful website, one finds a less than enthusiastic quote from LaMunyon.
“It was fewer than on our opening night,” she said on the website. “Somehow the word got out that we were sold out early. We had lots of calls late Friday and Saturday asking if we had cancellations.”
Throughout our interview, Carter repeatedly expressed his appreciation for the players on his team, as he said he knew most of them before he even knew what the River Sharks were.
“Those were a great group of guys, because they’d played for me before and played for me for nothing,” Carter said during a Zoom interview. “They enjoyed the game. Now playing for the River Sharks caused me more burden than ever, because now you’re talking about money and guys getting paid.”
Following these first few games, the Chattanooga arena football team went on the road. Players like Anthony Wynn and Roderick Russell were now playing for free, which might have been better than what other teams in the league were going through.
The Montgomery Maulers, also owned by LaMunyon, hadn’t received a paycheck for their play. Rather than pay up, LaMunyon just cut every player in order to avoid handing out cash. This move did not incur a punishment from NIFL president Carolyn Shiver, who did not respond when reached for a comment.
“I have cut all the football players,” LaMunyon was quoted saying in the Battle Creek Enquirer, “Fans wills see a whole new team in Montgomery. Maybe they can win a game.”
LaMunyon didn’t cut the River Sharks, but Carter’s guys had to be convinced to play the game against the Cincinnati Marshals. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the River Sharks were smacked 82-0. Yes, you read that correctly. 82-0.
“The River Sharks crossed midfield just five times,” the local paper declared,” and they had five possessions which netted negative yardage.”
After that game, the River Sharks basically dissolved, with LaMunyon nowhere to be seen and debts still unpaid. Carter said LaMunyon never paid for the turf the team used, nor did she pay rent for the facility they utilized in East Ridge.
“Everybody knows you in that town. These are people who are now saying “Make this right” and I’m sitting there and I don’t know what to do,” Carter said. “One time she was hiding out across the street in the hotel. You wouldn’t believe it. I knew things were really starting to go bad, and I said I’m going to distance myself and we’re going to play as the Tennessee Pioneers if we play again.”
LaMunyon put out a rosier statement on the team’s official site.
“We're also looking at the possibility of a venue change from Camp Jordan Arena," she said on the site. "If that happens the announcement will be made in a few days. I want our last two games of the season to be played before a packed house.”
Predictably, the team basically folded after the shellacking in Ohio. Carter eventually found himself as a high school coach, far removed from his days working for LaMunyon’s indoor football circus.
“After that I took a job at a school called Garinger High School that hadn’t won a game,” Carter said. “They hadn’t won a game in a few years, and people were telling me that was the worst thing I could do. But in my mind, I had just come out of one of the worst situations you ever could think about.”
Now almost 15 years later, Carter looks back at his tenure as a bitter learning experience. If such an opportunity happened today, he said he would look into who was making the offer before accepting.
“It was probably one of the biggest scams around. They were playing on people’s dreams and hopes, and if it didn’t work out, they’d ship up and move to the next city,” Carter said. “You need to do thorough research and a background check on people. A lot of times, you can get engulfed by your dreams and your dreams can make you blind.”
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Contact Joseph Dycus at joseph.a.dycus@gmail.com
Coach Chris Carter