After being handed a 10-season losing streak, a familiar face, and new coach, Ryan Benjamin, turned River Ridge High School’s football team into a winning competitor in its district.

Benjamin, a former defensive end for the River Ridge Knights, and a retired National Football League (NFL) defensive end, took lessons learned to the Pasco County team as head coach, and focused them on fundamentals, basic drills, and simple techniques. That changed the losing varsity team into a winning, fierce, and dominating group of players.
He took the head coaching position in June 2011, allowing him virtually no time to prepare for the upcoming season.

But in short order, Coach Benjamin turned the players into what he labeled in an interview, as the mature, intelligent, group of young football players they are now. A goal he says is really important to himself, described as the following: “And about the kids, if they can get half as much out of what is going on here at River Ridge as the coaching staff is able to, then we consider that a success and it is and has been really rewarding.”

Benjamin, who also played for University of South Florida (USF), before moving into the NFL and eventually becoming part of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ team that won a Super Bowl, knows what it takes to maintain and create a high performing football team. He learned many of those techniques during his playing career, from which he retired in 2004. “I was a primarily a defensive end throughout my career but I also learned how to llong snap while I was at USF” said Coach Benjamin.

Benjamin says this year, during the off-season, the Knights have been and still are meeting a total of eight times a week at the school campus, Monday through Thursday, two times a day, once in the morning, and once at night, in the gym and on the field. The players are required to attend a minimum of four of the eight workouts.

When they come, Benjamin says, they come to play hard and get down to business, starting with the basic drill of tackling an opposing player, and moving on to drills involving pursuing the opposing team.

Helping Coach Benjamin are several assistant coaches, including his brother Doug. Coach Benjamin made clear that he could not have had any chance of turning around this franchise without the help of his many assistant coaches. Some of the assistant coaches are paid while others are there to volunteer their time.

Coach Benjamin emphasized his focus on the fundamentals is aimed at making those skills second nature to the players.

With the last previous winning season occurring in 2000 before the winning 2011 season, Coach Benjamin said the only thing he had in mind was bestowing upon the players the most important thing they can ever own: getting back their confidence.

He said he knew the task would not be easy, especially since some key players moved on to bigger things, and that the newer players understood they had big shoes to fill. They also recognized there were still big expectations for them to finally bring winning back to River Ridge High School. With hard work, time, faith, and unity.

In addition to instilling fundamentals at the start of last season, Coach Benjamin focused on finding strategies and motivational philosophies that worked with different groups of players. He also concentrated on helping many players, not just one or two, to mature into the team leaders. Especially because last year was a success for the Knights, many teams in the district now see what they can do and will now take no mercy on the newly formed competitor. “The district is really tough” said Coach Benjamin.

According to Coach Benjamin, the heart and ethic is there, the intensity is there, the fire in the hearts of the kids is there, and they are ready for the season to start, be undefeated, and win the district championship. But, even the pursuit of the championship, Coach Benjamin said he knows “there is always room for improvement in every player, play, and part of the team.”

Coach Benjamin says, a force the student body calls the “Swagger” has returned to the school and the Knights. He hopes to keep it going.

“Our goal is to make this absolutely 100% positive experience for all of these kids. Is it going to be easy no, it’s going to be difficult and that goes towards anything worth having great success comes with a great price”

Evan Abramson, BCP contributor