Barry Lunney Sr. is going out on top.
Lunney announced his retirement as Bentonville's football coach and assistant athletic director Monday. He told his coaches and players Monday at the Tiger Sports Complex.
Lunney, 62, was 248-90-1 in 28 years as a head coach, claiming 8 state championship and winning or sharing 16 conference titles.
He won four state championships at Fort Smith Southside (1991-1992, 1997, 2002) and four at Bentonville (2008, 2010, 2013-2014). His last state championship came last month when the Tigers came back to beat Fayetteville 24-21 to earn their second consecutive Class 7A crown at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
Lunney, who arrived at Bentonville in 2005 after 16 seasons at Southside, said he almost retired after the 2013 season, but decided to stay at Bentonville for one more season.
"I've been praying about this for a while," Lunney said. "It's something about my faith. I always sit back and evaluate every year. I felt this was the time. Ten years, I've been here.
"Everything just pointed to me retiring."
Coaching high school football wasn't just a job for Lunney, he said -- it was a calling.
"The relationships is what you cherish," Lunney said. "The wins and losses will come and go. We're shedding tears because of the memories, but we're anxious to looking forward to what God has in store for us."
Lunney wife Becky have three children: sons Barry Jr. and Daniel, a daughter, Rachel, and nine grandchildren. His contract at Bentonville expires on June 30.
Lunney grew up in Fort Smith and graduated from Northside in 1970. He graduated from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla., in 1975. He was an assistant at Southside, Greenwood and Fordyce and earned his first head coaching job at Beebe, where he guided the Badgers for two seasons in 1987-1988 before being hired at Southside in 1989.
Lunney recalled a conversation he had with Kansas City (Mo.) Rockhurst Coach Tony Severino before the season opener that lends some context to Lunney's decision. Lunney said Severino told him if he could write a perfect script, he would like to step away from coaching on his own terms and be able to say that he still has two or three good years left.
Lunney steps away after an eighth state championship, and the Tigers showed great resolve to accomplish it.
Bentonville started 0-4 in 2014 -- the worst start of Lunney's tenure at the school -- but earned a share of the 7A-West Conference title with Fort Smith Southside. The Tigers beat Bryant and North Little Rock before knocking off conference rival Fayetteville in the 7A state title game.
Two of Lunney's state championships came with his sons Barry Jr. and Daniel. Barry -- now the University of Arkansas tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator -- was quarterback for Southside's 1991 title; Daniel quarterbacked the 1997 title team.
All eight state championships are special, Lunney said.
"They've all got a story line to them," Lunney said. "They're all significant. You couldn't draw it up better the way we did at the end. All the others we had been in control of from the start."
Fort Smith School District Athletic Director Jim Rowland, a former Southside coach, was a Northside assistant when Lunney was a sophomore at Fort Smith Northside in 1968.
"He's a special person to me," Rowland said. "Not only was he a great football coach, he's a great person. He's a great role model for all the athletes who played under him."
Lunney ranks as the ninth-winningest Arkansas high school coach of all time and is tied with Barton's Frank McClellan, the state's all-time winningest coach, for second with eight state titles. Rowland said he believes Lunney should be mentioned with the likes of McClellan and former Little Rock Central coach Wilson Matthews, who won a state record 10 titles as recognized by the Arkansas Activities Association.
"He's a good, solid football coach that believed in all three phases of the game," Rowland said. "He believed in doing things right. If you build your coaching career on integrity and character and teaching the kids the difference between right and wrong and holding them accountable, you're going to be successful."
Current Southside Coach Jeff Williams, who took over for Lunney in 2005, said consistency is one of Lunney's hallmarks.
"He was a great coach and a great motivator," Williams said. "He's a guy who a lot of guys look up to."
Williams will go down as the last coach to beat Lunney. Southside beat Bentonville 10-7 in Week 4 before Bentonville won its final nine games to win the 7A state championship.
"Any time you got a win against Coach Lunney, it was a special deal," Williams said. "I've been impressed with his teams. They're not going to beat themselves. I've called him many times on different situations and getting his advice. He's always there for everybody.
"We compete like crazy on Friday night, but we're all in it for the kids, No. 1."
Lunney said that the addition of a second high school in Bentonville in 2016 wasn't a major factor in his decision to retire.
"It can't be about any of those things," Lunney said. "It has to be about you. It could have been last year or the year before. When I came here, I didn't have any idea I'd be here 10 years."
Bentonville Superintendent Mike Poore credited Lunney for his work with the football program as well as the community.
"He was a person who believed in his coaches and his kids," Poore said. "That belief and trust netted him a lot of W's. He let his kids do some things and some of our play-calling was very imaginative.
"He made the community very proud. He developed a program."
Poole said that Bentonville will put together a committee to hire a coach. The job will be posted at a later date, he added.
Whoever takes over at Bentonville will have senior quarterback Kasey Ford returning as the Tigers pursue a third consecutive state championship.
"It's a great place," Lunney said. "It's a great community. The split is coming, so there will be challenges there the community hasn't faced. As far as kids wanting to be part of something special, there's a big part of that here. It's a great fanbase. I'd put it up against anywhere."
Sports on 01/27/2015