Coach of the Year: Darren Bennett

Tulare High football coach led his team to the D-II title in 2008.

Published online on Friday, Jan. 09, 2009

It was as humiliating as it was convincing, a 63-14 loss to El Diamante for the 2007 Central Section Division II football championship that coach Darren Bennett and his Tulare Redskins had to lug into the offseason.

And what justification?

What about the 13-0 record leading into that game?

What about the 6-0 mauling of the East Yosemite League?

What about the overpowering performances of Bobby Barnes, Jontell Reedom, D.J. Bennett and all those guys?

"Yet you lose at the end of the season and you feel like a failure," Darren Bennett says. "You've embarrassed yourself, and that's all you remember."

So they did, and that explained the buckets of tears that flowed through the fog at Visalia Community Stadium on Dec. 13, when the Redskins reversed the table, defeated El Diamante 42-33, closed a 13-0 season and hauled the section D-II hardware back to Tulare.

And among those weeping, standing out of uniform on the sideline, were several members of the 2007 team who had graduated.

"I've never had a more satisfying season than this year because of what happened last year," said Bennett, The Bee's 2008 Coach of the Year. "That loss haunted me, my staff and the kids."

Amazing, the impact of a single defeat for a coach with a 109-52-1 record, nine EYL titles, three section crowns and two runner-ups.

The Redskins didn't make excuses after the El Diamante loss, though they could have because of a combination of suspensions and injuries that proved devastating — not to suggest the Miners weren't the better team: "They were a hell of a team," Bennett says.

Tulare, instead, looked ahead, pounded the iron like never before in the weight room and combined physical superiority with its traditional skill-position brilliance to knock out El Diamante a year later to close a season in which it won by an average of 37.2 points.

Bennett says the Redskins had 18 players who could lift a combined 1,000 pounds in bench press, squat and power cleans — and five who could total 1,500 pounds.

"Tulare's always been known as a finesse team, not a physical team, and that, basically, was our goal, to turn that around," Bennett said. "Our kids paid the price in the weight room. Some of [El Diamante's] dads said their kids couldn't get out of bed the next morning because our kids hit so hard.

"I knew we would be more athletic, but we were also more physical. We were not under pressure just that Friday, but all year long. What a relief it was to win that game."

The reporter can be reached at aboogaard@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6336.