By Dave Krider
MaxPreps.com
Roger Barta spent 10 years as an assistant football coach at three Kansas high schools before taking the head job at tiny Smith Center, Kan., in 1978. The Redmen had struggled in recent years and he told MaxPreps, “Pam (his wife) and I thought that in a couple years we’d go some place better.”
Thirty-one years later, however, Barta still heads the Smith Center program, which has blossomed into a small-school juggernaut. The Redmen currently have won their last 56 games (2-0 this year) and four consecutive Class 2-1A state championships. Last year their magic wishbone accounted for an astounding 72 points in a single quarter and outscored 13 opponents by an amazing 844-20 margin. Nine players off that team moved on to college programs.
Last year’s mind-boggling season brought national attention, helping Barta to be named National Coach of the Year by the U.S. Army All-American Bowl Selection Committee. It also inspired New York Times sportswriter Joe Drape to begin writing a book (Our Boys: A Season On The Plains), which will be published in Sept. of 2009.
Drape, who currently is living in Smith Center, told MaxPreps, “This is not Friday Night Lights. They raise children the right way. Winning and losing doesn’t come up here.”
Jack Krier, owner-publisher of the weekly Smith County Pioneer, adds, “It’s just a tremendous program. I’m 68 years old and I had never seen anything like this. They don’t leave any stone unturned. Roger is one of the most mellow people. I’ve never seen him raise his voice at kids. He gets tremendous love and respect from kids.”
The football seniors are featured on trading cards, which are quite popular with elementary school students. All seniors in the school are asked to sign a pledge card promising to be alcohol- drug- and tobacco-free. It they break their promise, they must go to the elementary school and explain why they were dropped from the team.
To illustrate the passion of the town for football, Drape noted that 200 people made the two and one-half hour trip to Manhattan, Kan., to honor former Smith Center and current New Orleans Saints linebacker Mark Simoneau during his induction into the Kansas State University Ring of Honor. Simoneau signed autographs galore and also joined in a “town” picture which was taken after the game against North Texas.
The 63-year-old Barta has compiled an outstanding 278-58 record – with seven state titles – two games into his 31st season at Smith Center, a town of about 1,900 with a shrinking population and one stoplight. The high school has 112 students in grades 10-12. This year’s team has 57 players, which is about an average turnout.
Should this year’s team run the table and finish with a 13-0 record, it will tie the Kansas state record of 67 consecutive victories held by Pittsburg St. Mary’s Colgan. That streak was broken by none other than Smith Center in the 2004 state title game.
Barta grew up in Plainville, Kan., a tough oil town where he played little league baseball and was Plainville High’s starting quarterback for three years – all under the coaching of Al Hargrave. “He would haul us around and kind of raised us like his own sons,” Barta recalled fondly. Hargrave also had his high school players help coach little league baseball teams and when they later enrolled at a college he would enlist their aid in coaching American Legion baseball.
Barta graduated from Plainville in 1963 and headed for nearby Fort Hays State University where he did not participate in sports. He was majoring in math as a sophomore when he went home for Christmas vacation, thinking about dropping out and finding a full-time job. He took a temporary job in the oil field.
“They sent me up in a derrick,” he related. “It started to rain and I about froze to death. I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.’ I looked around and all the guys looked like they were 90 years old even though they were only in their 50s. They were missing fingers and teeth.”
So he got serious about college and graduated in 1967. He sandwiched a master’s degree from the University of Georgia around 10 years of coaching at Atwood, Tonganoxie and Wakeeney before landing in Smith Center in the fall of 1978. Six of those years were spent under Wakeeney head coach Earl Barber, “who taught me a lot,” Barta said.
At that time, Barta estimates the town had a population around 2,500 and the high school had 280 students in grades 9-12.
Dennis Hutchinson already had been an assistant football coach at Smith Center for five years and actually had turned down the head job once due to a time commitment as a music teacher. He was an immediate asset in helping Barta build a program which had been under .500 during his tenure. Today the remainder of the staff includes only former Smith Center players.
“He’s a great guy,” Hutchinson says of Barta. “He’s a great coach with no ego. If somebody praises him, he is going to defer the praise elsewhere. We believe in coaching the minutest details. We teach small, small details. The big things take care of themselves. He really is good about coaching coaches. If he has a coach for a week, he’ll be all pumped up.”
It was more of the same that first year with an unspectacular 3-6 record. But the very next year the Redmen sent shockwaves throughout Kansas by compiling a school-record 11 victories (two losses) and placing second in the Class 3A state tournament.
“The first year we struggled,” Barta conceded. “The next year we kind of solidified. The kids started believing and the parents got on board. They started working hard. (Most of the people) thought that was a special class and it wouldn’t happen again.”
In 1982, Smith Center won its first state title (3A) with a 12-1 record “and things just kept building,” Barta said. “Our expectations went up. It’s been a great place to raise kids (he has three) and the support was there. We’re blessed because the kids believe. Things just came into place as the years went by. We don’t talk about wins and losses – just work ethic – and everything else takes care of itself.”
State titles followed in 1986 and 1999 before the current reign of terror was launched in 2004.
Barta’s son, Brooks, was a junior fullback and linebacker on the 1986 state champs. He made All-State and later played linebacker for Kansas State. “It was fun,” Barta said of coaching his son. “We didn’t take it home.”
On one particular game night, Brooks forgot his helmet, which meant he wouldn’t be able to play. He told only Hutchinson, who kept it quiet until Brooks “rented” a freshman’s helmet for $10.
While Barta was chewing out the freshman, who kept quiet, Hutchinson related, “Brooks had his head down. I had my head down. We were afraid to tell him until 10 years later. He didn’t believe us when we told him.”
Today Brooks is in his 13th year as head coach at Holton, Kan. He points out that his father “takes an average kid and makes him a very good high school player. Colleges are excited about getting kids from Smith Center because they hit people and are strong.
“They’ve won a lot of football games when they don’t have even one college player. I bet they’ve lost 80 to 85 percent to the state champion (in playoffs), so they’re always in position. When they have a really good group of kids, they are going to win. When they have average kids, they are going to get close.”
It is estimated that Berta has sent 100 players into college football, close to 20 at Division I schools.
Barta has looked at bigger schools several times during his long tenure at Smith Center. He was serious about Emporia a long time ago, but finally withdrew his name because his daughter, Shelby, was a junior and did not want to move and the grandparents lived only an hour away.
Five years ago he was serious about moving to Topeka to coach at Class 6A Washburn Rural. “It looked awfully attractive,” he noted. “I didn’t get it. They were scared of my age, I guess.”
Ironically, Smith Center has gone unbeaten since then.
Barta says he has no hobbies. He is retired from teaching, but also coaches track, a post he has had for about 12 years.
His wife of 41 years, Pam, reveals that he is somewhat superstitious. She noted, “One season it was time for new Dockers because his were getting frayed. (He wouldn’t allow it.) He wears the same clothes (except for shirts) to every game. He does his own washing.”
Meanwhile, he claims, “I’m not superstitious. I just don’t like to take chances.”
Despite the long winning streak, Barta calls this year “not really any different. I don’t feel any pressure. I’m not sure how good we are.”
The veteran coach is “taking it one day at a time” when it comes to retirement. His legacy, long ago established, was cemented last year when the street along the stadium and high school was named “Roger Barta Way.”
That’s a little ironic, too, because Roger Barta’s “way” of coaching has taken a down-trodden program and made it feared and respected throughout the state of Kansas.
Barta refuses to compare players or teams, but his loyalty to even the least-talented player is legendary. That’s probably why his son, Brooks, says proudly, “They do things the right way. When they leave that program, they’re loyal and they love him.”