Rich Bender’s coaching success put him among the top 10 winningest baseball coaches in New Jersey high school state history.
And while he became a household name over 43 seasons after starting the Delran program, the longtime Bordentown resident was much more than just a great coach.
He was a beloved father, grandfather, friend, mentor and teacher.
“He really did separate it pretty well,” said Bender’s wife, Sue. “We knew what was going on and all that, but he really did separate it. When he came home, he was home pretty much.”
Bender passed away on July 4. He would have been 75 on Aug. 2. Hundreds of former students, players, neighbors, classmates and family paid their respects at his viewing and funeral.
“He was a legend,” said Lawrence High baseball coach Jim Maher, a rival coach who became a good friend. “He was a legend as a coach. He was a great family man, a great teacher. There was a lot about teaching, coaching and family life.”
Bender was a local product. He went to Hamilton High, where he met and began dating Sue. He’s in their Athletic Hall of Fame. He played basketball and baseball at Mercer County Community College and then played baseball at Rider University. The high school sweethearts married in 1973, and he coached through the first 45 years of their marriage (he was an assistant before head coach) until he retired after the 2018 season.
“I knew what I was getting into,” Sue said with a laugh. “I knew it was gonna be a while.”
The coaching numbers are staggering. He coached 43 seasons — though he submitted his resignation after his third season when Delran didn’t have a baseball field of its own and he tired of driving back and forth to their practice field. Three weeks later, he changed his mind and went back. The athletic director never had accepted his resignation, and Bender coached 40 more seasons until before the 2019 season.
“He would not have retired if he didn’t have to, but it was just getting too hard in that the baseball field that they did build was too far away from the school and he was having trouble getting back and forth and having the strength,” Sue said. “I kept trying to talk him into maybe being an assistant coach or whatever, but he wouldn’t hear it. He had to do it all. He either had to do it all or nothing.”
Bender retired as the winningest coach in South Jersey history with a record of 672-349. He won state titles in 1983 and 1995. Delran won five more sectional championships. His 1995 team went 25-1 and was ranked tops in the state and ninth nationally. His teams placed first or second in their Burlington County Scholastic League divisions 28 times using a pure style of the game, a small-ball version that became his trademark.
“He was a combination of everything: preparation, competitiveness, the kids played hard, and to me his teams played like high school baseball should be played,” Maher said. “It’s a lot different from the way the game is now, especially at the major league level when nobody bunts, nobody hits-and-runs.”
Jim Goodwin took over at Delran when Bender stepped down. Goodwin is one of 24 father-son combinations that played for Bender over his coaching career. He’d known “Papa Bear,” as many called Bender, since he was 4. Goodwin also was an assistant to Bender.
“As a player, you know him as this tough, hard-nosed guy that just wants the best out of you and you walk the line for him and you stay in line,” Goodwin said. “Then when you get on the other side where you’re coaching with him, you see more of the humor with him, like that off the field side of him, where he’s a much more laid back, much, much more funny type of guy.”
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Bender’s three children — Lori Bender Flynn, Jason Bender and Jared Bender — saw different parts of their dad’s coaching success and personality, but to them he was always a dad first. Bender often took the boys on weekends to be bat boys for his Delran team.
As they got older and began to play high school themselves, they appreciated better what everyone had been saying and writing about him. Through the years, the children came to realize he was this larger than life coach outside of their home.
“I think I knew that he was a legend,” said Lori, the eldest of the three. “I didn’t know it was this huge. I mean, he was just my dad. I didn’t pay attention to a lot of that other stuff.”
Bender always followed his own children’s and grandchildren’s pursuits. Jason played soccer and baseball at Notre Dame High. Jared played three sports and was inducted into the Bordentown Regional High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003-2004. He played soccer at Rutgers University. One of his favorite memories was playing finally for his father with the Bordentown Legion baseball team.
“That was awesome,” Jared said. “And I promise I’m not saying it because he’s my dad, he really was easily one of the best coaches in any sport I played for. He’s just so detailed and he was tough, but all the players loved him.”
Early in the Legion season, when he didn’t run out a groundout hard enough, his dad took him out of the game. Jared started to bring it up when they got home, but the lesson had already been learned and Bender kept the game separate from their home life.
“He was always supportive,” Jared said. “It honestly didn’t matter what we did or what sports we played or any of that. His whole thing was just have fun and if you’re going to do it, do it 100 percent.”
Bender coached Jason’s Bordentown travel soccer team as well as rec teams through the years. In Delran’s annual tournament, he invited Notre Dame when Jason played there and Bordentown when Jared played for the Scotties.
In those games, he let his assistant call the pitches against his sons. He put his family first, and that’s what stood out to his children.
“The biggest thing I admired is that his number one priority in his life was his family and nothing, absolutely nothing would could before it,” Lori said. “He kept us together. He kept us going strong because of that value. That’s one big, big thing. And that he is probably one of the most organized people I’ve ever met in my life. He was very, very regimented on a program. And he loved his family.”
He supported what they wanted to do. And he supported them when they didn’t want to do something. Lori was 6 when she tried soccer.
“I was freezing and they were all sitting in the car and I sat right down on the field,” she recalled. “He didn’t say anything to me. He just carried me off and we never spoke about it again and I didn’t play any sports.”
He was the same way as a mentor. He showed unconditional care for coaching peers. He helped to mold Goodwin into the person he is today.
“I was lucky where he was like an extra grandfather to me,” Goodwin said. “He was someone that I could reach out to early on in my coaching career and be like, hey, Coach, I know you’ve dealt with parents, or I know you’ve dealt with administration and on the field stuff, umpires, how would you go about this situation? And he was able to give me advice and really help me.”
When his six grandchildren came along, Bender enjoyed a new generation of family pursuits. Gavin Shiver, Jared’s stepson, was a 1,000-point scorer at Bordentown.
“He came to every one of his basketball games, so that’s kind of a real unique and special thing for us,” Jared said. “And then all the girls, whatever they did, he was there. Here’s a big sports guy and he was at all their dancing competitions and watching all the dances, which is like something he would never do, but because it was them…”
Said Sue: “He also enjoyed them, which nobody believed that he would get as into that as he did. But he did.”
Five of Bender’s grandchildren are girls. They have played soccer and cheered and danced. Lori’s younger daughter, Lia, is looking at playing college softball and following her mom’s footsteps as a speech therapist after her senior year at Northern Burlington, where Bender once coached a few years of basketball.
“I feel sad about the fact that he won’t know where Lia ends up,” Lori said. “I mean, he will know, but I just wish she could have known that before he passed what she was going to do.”
Bender did relish another Super Bowl win for his beloved Eagles this past winter, watching from the renowned “Eagles Nest” upstairs in their Bordentown house. Jared converted the bedroom that he and Jason shared into a man cave of sorts in time for their dad to enjoy the Philadelphia Phillies’ 2008 World Series.
“It was a little place for him to retreat and what all his favorite teams,” Sue said. “That was really cool. They were up there every Eagles game, and sometimes I was up there. It was mostly the family, but a few friends here and there. And I guess the last time he was up there was the Super Bowl.”
Bender loved his family time, and so many family gatherings were spent at their Bordentown home. It was another facet of his life, away from proving he knew how to win and how to get the most out of his players and teams. Both were important to him over the five decades. His family will never forget him, and many believe Delran shouldn’t either.
“I don’t know how they have not named that field after him,” Maher said. “Every time I see somebody from Delran over the last 10 years, I would say, how have you people not named that field after him? I mean he was their only coach from ’76 to 2018, won state championships, had 600 wins, all the kids that he impacted.”
Only the Delran stadium currently is named for a past administrator. The Delran baseball team will wear “RB” patches this year in honor of their first-ever coach Rich Bender, and Goodwin hopes the school district takes Maher’s advice soon.
“I feel the same way,” he said. “It should be Papa Bear Field.”
Rich Bender retired as Delran baseball coach after the 2018 season.,
