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By SCOTT PURKS, Times Staff WriterWhen Hillsborough High made the Class 6A final in 1996, it helped break the county out of its seemingly permanent postseason slump.
TAMPA - The year was 1996, a time when Hillsborough County prep football was considered, well, not so good.
Couldn't blame anybody for thinking that way because no county football team had reached a state final since 1971 and no county team had won a state title since 1969.
As the seasons reached into the late 1980s and early 1990s, it got worse. From 1986 to 1993, no Hillsborough county team won a playoff game and in 1988 none of the 18 county schools reached the playoffs.
So what happened in 1996, the year Hillsborough High won four playoff games and reached the Class 6A state final?
"It was a magical run, it really was," said Earl Garcia, the Terriers coach then and now. "First of all we had all worked really hard, and then we all got on the same page and just worked even harder.
"It was a blue-collar bunch of guys who didn't think about losing. They just thought about getting it done."
It didn't matter that their field house was a cramped, red-and-black, sweaty, stinky, concrete dungeon, and their field was a dirt pit. It didn't matter that five players went both ways or that they had no star running back or that the top wide receiver, Benji Drawdy, was a slow, small guy (5-foot-9, 155 pounds) who had never played football before his senior season.
Somehow they just kept finding a way to win playoff games: 35-30 over Brandon, 7-0 over Dr. Phillips, 37-7 over Niceville and 43-21 over Pensacola.
The run ended with a 21-7 loss to Miami Carol City in the Class 6A final. Though it was crushing at the time, little did those Terriers know what they had done for Hillsborough County football.
After 1996, county teams started reaching the state quarterfinals and semifinals without much trouble. In 2001, Chamberlain reached the Class 5A final before losing. In 2002, Jefferson and Wharton reached state finals, and in 2003 and 2004 Armwood finally broke down the door, winning state championships.
After Chamberlain's 2001 run, Billy Turner, who has coached county football longer than anyone (37 years), might have put it in the best perspective when he said, "I really hate to say this, but I have to give Hillsborough a lot of credit for the (county's turnaround). Hillsborough raised the level and everybody else had to start working to keep up."
Garcia grins at this, but, when asked about his most vivid memory of that '96 season, he grimaces.
"I remember losing to King in the final seconds (9-7) ...oh, I'll never forget that, never," Garcia said. "That ruined our undefeated season."
So, of all things, Garcia picked what he refers to as, "the play," which went as follows: Hillsborough had the ball on King's 10-yard line with seconds remaining, how many seconds, however, was a mystery because King's scoreboard had gone dead.
So thinking there was much more time remaining than there was, Garcia called for a handoff, which was fumbled and returned 88 yards for King's winning touchdown.
"All we had to do was take a knee and the game was over," Garcia said. "That was it!"
The good news, Garcia said, was that after that, "We took nothing for granted."
All right, that play aside, what else did he remember?
"I remember it being a heck of a lot of fun," he said. "When we went to the state final, it was Dec. 19 and my wife (Gilda) got this Christmas tree and she made an ornament for each player with their number on it and we put the tree with the ornaments in the hotel.
"I remember the whole county getting behind us. It felt so good. It felt like we were breaking new ground."