You cannot ignore or devalue good coaching. Hermitage has always had very good athletes and talent, but it takes a sound coach to provide the structure the Panther program needs. In the past 8 years Hermitage has lost two good ones in Kane and Bedwell. Look how fast Bedwell turned around a bleeding program. Whether you like the man or not he can coach.
I think I will give them a little slack there three losses where to Varina a 6-0 team they lost to Thomas Dale a 6-0 team and lake Taylor a 5 -1 team. If coaching is the reason they lost those three games I just don't know..
The way that Herm has looked this year after bringing back essentially their whole team, it’s kind of hard to cut them slack. Their wins are over teams with a combined 8-17 win/loss record and they were down 21-7 at the half to Glen Allen and only up 15-8 against Tucker at the half, those wins were very ugly and sloppy. They are big and have very good athletes, with 4 players with Division 1 offers, not even including the App State commit. Not saying they should be 7-0, but definitely should be more competitive and look more crisp than they do.
Yes sir! Fortunate enough to know every single last one of those kids on that team and it’s heartbreaking to see them having such a cluster*** of a season under piss poor leadership and coaching. Won’t say too much but we felt extremely good about these same seniors to win at least 1 state championship as 6 of these kids started during COVID season as sophomores. They’ve put in so much work and to see them losing and underrecruited is hard. Great kids in that program.
Appreciate you brother. Hopefully they can right the ship going into the playoffs for the kids’ sake. 25+ seniors on that team. When I tell you that Coach Bedwell had that program turned around and the way people are talking about Highland Springs this year, they’d be mentioning Herm in that same breath under his leadership. It’ll be a minute before Herm gets this kind of talent in one class again.
I live in Charlotte now but am a 1970 graduate of Hermitage (giving away my age). What happened with Bedwell? I thought he was a good hire when Hermitage picked him up.
That's a shame. Hopefully Hermitage can regain championship form.
I hope so too. I’ve been watching from afar this year and hate to see them struggling to see .500. Some awesome and very talented young men playing in that program.
I was on the staff with Bedwell at Henrico and he’s a fantastic high school coach. I gave the quick short version. I knew all the details as well. He WAS found guilty in the news. He removed equipment from LCB and their sore arses couldn’t handle him taking another job after leaving to take care of his family. The county refused to renew his contract as a football coach because of the way it would look and parental complaints. I live a mile from the school,and I can promise you, this is not the area to have that kind of media attention. David & I are still friends to this day. I think he got “ham-stringed”!
Yes sir, that’s Coach! He’s one of my closest friends and he’s doing real well in his new occupation. I’d give anything to be back on the sidelines with him. We were in contact with your AD to try to get a game set up before he left, but we couldn’t settle on a date. Would’ve loved to have seen Dinwiddie/Herm play this year.
Coach Bedwell and Coach Mills have had a relationship for many years. We scrimmaged Bird for as far back as I can remember. As soon as Coach Bedwell landed at Hermitage, there was talk and speculation that we would either end up scrimmaging or playing them in coming years.
