Column: To the Wall we add another
We could fill days highlighting the career of Grady Bennett, which was celebrated this past Friday with his induction onto the Legends Stadium Wall of Fame.
He’s 51 and had quite the run, from high school standout to Grizzly quarterback to successful coach in football and other sports in Kalispell.
But the reason he’s here, he says, is the people that influenced him going through the halls of Flathead High School.
“One of the lessons I try to teach my players is that any time you achieve any individual award, you give credit to the people that influenced you,” Bennett said. “I had three head coaches: Bob Rathe, Bill Epperly and Dan Hodge, and they were all incredibly influential.”
Raith was a football coach, Epperly guided the Braves’ boys basketball team and Hodge continues to coach track. “And Epperly and Hodge were business teachers,” said Bennett, who was a business major his first three years at the University of Montana.
Eventually – after working a few summer camps in Kalispell – he thought his trio of mentors had it pretty good. He changed his major to education.
“The point being: All three of those gentlemen are on the Wall,” the Glacier High business teacher said. “And now I get to join them.”
Bennett was fresh off a record-setting career as the Grizzlies quarterback when he applied for a teaching and football assistant job at Flathead. He finished second to Tony Arntson, another former Griz QB, and headed to the CFL to try out for the BC Lions, along with Griz receivers Mike Trevathan and Matt Clark.
“After eight weeks of course they make the team, and I do not,” Bennett said, and now it was time to fish or cut bait. He was in for a surprise: Arntson veered south to take the head coaching job for 8-man football-playing Charlo.
Bennett was in.
The rest spins by pretty fast. He was an assistant to Bob Applegate in football in 1991, then became offensive coordinator in 1993. In 2004 Bennett took over as head coach and lasted three years – until Glacier High opened its doors in 2007.
It was a move that only really occurred to him in the final weeks before decision day. Before the mill levy passed, he said, he selfishly hoped to reap the benefits of one giant student body and have a dominant team. Now there was a chance to start anew.
“It was a risk,” he said. “It could be two years, three years, go 0-30 and be done.”
His first two teams at Glacier went 2-18; since then the Wolfpack has gone 89-39 and played in two State AA title games.
What he’s seen since his youth — playing touch football behind that same stadium during games — boggles. His roommate those two months in British Columbia? Doug Flutie. He remembers all the basketball talent that not only played for Flathead but against – Larry Krystkowiak, KC McGowan, Rob and Scott Hurley, Trevor Maier – in front of packed houses.
He feels humbled to have followed the likes of Jeff Epperly and Scott Zanon as QB of Flathead, and blessed to have coached NFLer Brock Osweiler.
When he became head coach at Flathead he found himself in a room with legends like Jack Johnson of CMR and Paul Klaboe of Billings West.
“Now here I am, the veteran of the crew,” Bennett said, and it’s true: He’s the longest-tenured AA coach.
“You review your career and … it’s so surreal,” he added. “Honestly I go, ‘Really? That was me?’”
It was; it is. Bennett has no idea when he’d stop coaching but loves the Friday Night Lights, and heading down 93 South the next morning to help TV broadcasts of Griz games.
“It kind of gives me an escape,” he said and then laughs. “Especially after a loss.
“I still feel like I’m 25,” he concluded. “Why not keep going? We’ll see, but I still love it.”
Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or at fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com. You can follow him @Fritz_Neighbor on Twitter.