Inductees

Talk about being a testament to sticking it out, to putting in the hard work and believing.

Back in 1989, newly hired assistant football coach Erle Bennett rolled into the rural community of Centralia at a time of low participation numbers and little success. And his previous stop had been a similar challenge. But …

“If I did anything right, it was that, I stayed in Centralia and stayed at it,” Bennett said.

He certainly enjoyed a remarkable, 27-year run at Centralia High School, including 22 seasons as head coach, and put the Panthers on the state map. It’s why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame is proud to induct Bennett with the Class of 2019.

From 1994 to 2016, Centralia earned 206 wins, including 70 consecutive regular-season victories from 2005 to 2012.

The 2003 team (14-0) won the Class 2 state championship, and two others nearly pulled the trick, too: the 2002 team was a state runner-up, the 2009 team a state semifinalist. Along the way, his teams won 11 district and nine conference championships.

The secret to success? Upon being promoted to head coach in 1994, it became mandatory that every player in the lower levels received playing time. The idea was to grow and maintain participation numbers, and then ultimately feed into the varsity program. Eventually, about 80 of Centralia’s roughly 200 high school boys annually played football, up 50 from his arrival.

In other words, Bennett built a tradition and fit like a glove in a community featuring mom-and-pop businesses ringing the town square.

“I’ll never forget him marching into my office (when the Centralia head coaching job) opened,” said Jim Head, a former athletic director. “He said, ‘I want to be the next football coach at CHS and, by God, they will have to fire me because I’ll never leave.”

That was 1994, and the tail end of a challenging, 11-year coaching journey. After a brief stint as a Northeast Nodaway assistant, he was head coach of Worth County High School (1984-1988) and then joined Centralia, working as a defensive coordinator and offensive line coach for five seasons. Wins had been hard to come by.

Yet Bennett knew what that a positive head coach could enhance a blue-collar community like Centralia. After all, Bennett at age 13 lost his dad, and eventually gained a surrogate father in his Cameron High School football coach, Phil Gooding.

“He let me hang around, which was important when you don’t have an adult role model,” said Bennett, who later earned a degree from Northwest Missouri State University.

Momentum had been building, with 7-3 and 6-4 seasons in 1992 and 1993.

In his first season as head coach, Centralia finished 8-2, its only losses to eventual state champion Monroe City and eventual state runner-up Warsaw (a year after Warsaw won Class 3). Contending then became routine in the Clarence Cannon Conference.

“We were doing a lot of things right,” Bennett said, noting participation numbers ballooned to the point that Centralia’s varsity no longer relied on freshmen and sophomores. Plus, he gained a voice on the hiring of assistant coaching candidates. “The staff gelled. I had three to four guys who all were like head coaches.”

The 2002 team featured a large offensive line and depth at skill positions. That team beat tradition-rich Monroe City 28-0 in the opening round, and then edged Lutheran North – which had an NCAA D-I recruit at running back – in a 14-7 semifinal win.

The 2003 team, with numerous returning lettermen and motivated to finish the job, won by an average of 33 points in its four playoff games. Before its semifinal at Caruthersville, a three-block-long line of Centralia fans lined up in front of the stadium there to greet their Panthers. A week later, Centralia beat Lawson 42-7.

The Panthers refused to settle for mediocrity.

“We could push our kids in the weight room,” Bennett said. “If you left at 5 in the morning to go lift and do that 30 times in the summer, you’re not going to give up when it’s a 7 o’clock game on Friday.”

Bennett credits so many for his success: his wife, Danielle, and their children Mary Kate, Claire and Cullen as well as numerous assistants, including Jim Newsted.

“I owe so much to the kids,” Bennett said. “And the thing that really made my career – and I mean this from the bottom of my heart – I got to go to that field with better men than me.”