HSFT Stop #20: Bruce
Bruce football endured quite a roller coaster ride of a season in 2025, winning their first five games before falling in four of their final five to end the season. Despite the 6-4 record, the Trojans finished fifth in district play and failed to make the postseason. With last season behind them, head coach Chuck Darbonne has now embraced this team’s attitude.
“Every year it’s kind of a different personality on the team. And you just have to match the type of guys that you have, and you’ve got to speak their language,” Darbonne said. “And for this group, you know, there’s a lot of jokesters in there. There’s also guys we’re very serious about getting better at football and kind of mixing the personality of the team and into you know, a good strong workout is just our goal for each day we have them out here.”
And just as Darbonne has been reading the personality of this team, so are the players with their fourth-year head coach. The players believe that the standard is changing around the program with Darbonne leading the charge.
“He means a lot. He’s definitely been a help in a great way with turning Bruce around, you know, five in our last year, first time since, I don’t even know, 2014, something like that. So he’s definitely been a great help. A lot of momentum and, you know, teams normally don’t fear Bruce. And we’re kind of getting on the map now,” quarterback Joshua Long said.
“It’s definitely a lot easier going into it after a winning season, getting all the guys on board and stuff so just getting everybody’s approach right and getting a feel for everything,” tight end Cayden Jones said. “We’re all brothers. Anybody can ask for anything, so just know we had that bond and that we can take that out on the football field on Friday nights.”
The Trojans will look to take one step further this season with a better finish in district play. Darbonne knows what they need to do in order to finish stronger this year.
“Better than last year. Being very competitive in the district,” Darbonne said. “We had multiple chances last year to go from anywhere from first to fifth and we ended up fifth. And obviously that’s not where we wanted to be, even with a good overall record. Fifth in district’s not where we want to be. So we have to work on the finer details too, to eliminate the turnovers and other things that cost us in those games.”
The team is focused on development. With only five seniors leaving after this season, they know the importance of influencing the younger players to push themselves during these hot summer months.
“It’s hard to to convince a 15 to 18-year-old to come up here and work hard for 2 hours, four days a week,” Darbonne said. “So just the guys that are that are older and have done it and seen all of the progress they’ve made from day one when I got here and they were here. So now they know what comes at the end of it if they work hard through it. So they’re able to push those young kids through because they’ve already been through it.”
Bruce will begin the 2026 season against Vardaman on Sept. 4.
