Legendary Kansas High School Football coach and Kansas Hall of Fame inductee Roger Barta has passed away at the age of 79, as first reported by Kansas Pregame.
Barta won eight state football championships as the head coach of Smith Center High School and holds multiple state records, including consecutive wins, consecutive playoff wins, and most undefeated seasons. He also holds the record for career coaching win percentage, winning 82.6% of the games he coached.
Barta was born in Ellsworth July 11, 1945, but grew up in Plainville, graduating from Plainville High School in 1963. He graduated from Fort Hays State with a degree in Mathematics in 1967 and earned his Master’s Degree from the University of Georgia in 1971. During his time getting his master’s, he was an assistant coach at Atwood, Tonganoxie, and Wakeeney High Schools.
Smith Center hired Barta in 1978, making a statement early in his tenure sending the team to the State Championship game his second year in and winning his first title in his fifth year. He’d go on to win eight titles with the Smith Center Redmen and had a career coaching record of 323-68 until his retirement in 2012.
During the latter half of his tenure was his most dominant as he had five consecutive undefeated seasons from 2004-08, winning 79 straight games. Both marks are state records.
According to the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, Barta worked under a “wish-bone” style of offense, which focused on running the ball with many options on who could take the ball in contrast to passing. It’s a style that can be seen as outdated as most teams today use a spread offense, but Barta would defeat his opponents using attention to detail and effort on every play. It’s a style that Roger’s son, Brooks, uses as well as the head coach at Holton High School.
Not long after his retirement, Barta was inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2014. His legacy lives on in Smith Center with the street leading up to their stadium known as Roger Barta Way, and beyond. A best-selling book called, “Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains” was written by New York Times Sportswriter Joe Drape, chronicling the 2008 team.
Despite all of the success, Barta always said it was never about him, according to the KS Sports Hall of Fame. He mostly enjoyed being an influence on the hundreds of kids he taught and uniting a community like he did at Smith Center.
