Some credit the growth to an ethanol plant that opened a year ago in nearby Phillipsburg and employs about 40 people, or the campus for transcendental meditation 12 miles northeast of here that will open in 2008.

Everyone agrees, however, that the main attraction is Coach Barta and the football program he has built amid wheat fields and water towers. Not only does Hubbard Stadium attract more than 1,600 people to watch his team each home game, but Barta’s scouting report for the coming opponent also becomes the hot topic of discussion throughout the week. This week for Oakley, it runs 28 pages and kicks off simply with, “This is the real deal, we must prepare well and quick.”

“We get it on Monday night,” said Joe Windscheffel, the Redmen’s senior quarterback. “As soon we get home, our dads start devouring it, and pretty soon, wherever you go in town, that’s all anyone is talking about.”

Barta, 62, is quick to smile and is a gentle sort with a honey baritone. Over 30 years here, he has won 273 games against 58 losses (an .825 winning percentage) and guided the Redmen to six state titles. He has had plenty of offers to move up and on, but instead he stayed and watched dozens of his boys go to play college football. One, Mark Simoneau, reached the National Football League.

Image Cards of the Redmen, like this of Joe Windscheffel, are traded at the elementary school.

“He looks and sounds like a math teacher, which he is, and is about as laid-back as they come,” Simoneau, a linebacker for the New Orleans Saints, said by telephone. “As good a coach as he is, he’s a better guy. He treats people like gold.”

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Perhaps the best evidence of Barta’s hold on the town is the number of former players who have returned home each weekend for games and, in many cases, for a whole lot longer. Four of his former players teach here and coach alongside him.