The DeLand football team definitely feels like it missed out on something last season.
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The Bulldogs rolled through the first 12 games unscathed, clubbing teams by an average margin of 32 points per game and scoring at will, averaging 50 points. Then they ran into Lake Mary. A couple of miscues and penalties in a Class 7A quarterfinal game against Lake Mary spelled doom. The Rams went on to win the state championship on a miraculous play.
“It’s crushing. And then the way Lake Mary won it … Well, hats off to them and Scott (Perry, Lake Mary’s coach) does a great job, he’s an alum and he deserves it. No sour grapes at all, but it shoulda been us,” Darlington said.
His players echo that sentiment and almost all of the Bulldogs’ main contributors return from last year’s team. They are determined. They are hungry.
Darlington knows he has a group that doesn’t come along very often.
“These guys grew up together. They are DeLand kids. They know each other, they care about each other and I really do feel like this is a special team. It’s the deepest senior class I have ever had,” said Darlington, who won three state championships at Apopka.
He enters his fourth season at DeLand and will be relying on a senior-heavy bunch that has plenty of experience. He has 18 senior starters and a total of 21 starters returning.
“I don’t think I have ever had 18 senior starters before. That’s the thing that’s different about these guys, their wealth of experience,” Darlington said. “Now, does that mean we’re going to win the state championship? No. We may not even make the playoffs. You gotta play the games.”
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Not making the playoffs would be an outlandish idea for this group. They are led by one of the best running backs in the state in junior Taihj Moore, who rushed for 1,427 yards and 25 touchdowns a year ago, despite sharing the ball with the Marceles Carey (1,459 yards and 21 touchdowns), who is now at Bowling Green.
Moore can also catch the ball (18 receptions for 261 yards, one touchdown). Back to deliver it is senior quarterback Gardner Nordman.
Nordman may not throw the ball a lot in Darlington’s scheme, but when he does, he is efficient. Last season he completed 65% of his passes for 1,369 yards and 11 touchdowns.
Nordman rarely makes mistakes, just three interceptions last season, and he can also run the ball (averaged 6 yards a carry). Darlington is expecting big things from his leader.
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“I think Gardner is going to have a big year. Taihj may get all of the attention, and that’s OK, but Gardner is going to surprise some people this season,” Darlington said.
The defense has almost every starter returning, led by linebacker Lane Roberts, defensive linemen Jordan Banks and Joe Johnson, and defensive back An’Tario Wright, to name a few. Nordman and Moore also play in the defensive backfield.
Nordman, and the rest, want to do enough to be able to wash out the bad taste left over from the loss to Lake Mary.
“Knowing that we should have beat them is the hardest part,” Nordman said of Lake Mary’s 40-31 victory.
But what made it more difficult was to watch Lake Mary go on to win the state championship, and to endure all of the hoopla that surrounded the victory after the way Lake Mary won the title game, with a Hail Mary pass as time expired.
“It made it worse, because that made it feel like we could have won (the state title). But I was happy for them. They’re good people,” Nordman said. “The Lake Mary game was tough because we were one or two plays away from winning that game by two scores.
“We’re just glad we have one more year.”
Every player knows exactly what the expectations are. Darlington says the talk is not all about winning a state championship, but everyone knows what the goal is.
“When you go 12-0 (before the Lake Mary loss) and return everybody except Marceles, there’s a lot of pressure,” Nordman said. “But we’re all excited for it. We like the pressure.”
DeLand will have a huge test in Week 2, when one of the best teams in the country visits for an Aug. 28 game. St. Frances Academy of Baltimore, which finished as the No. 2 team in last year’s MaxPreps national rankings, comes to town and Spec Martin Stadium will be packed.
Another big game on the DeLand calendar will be the annual matchup with Mainland. This year the Bucs are back in the Bulldogs district and the Oct. 23 game in Daytona Beach will likely be for the 6A District 2 championship.
“It’s easy to talk about a state championship, but in Week 2 we’ve gotta play the best team in the nation, and we also have Lake Wales, Mainland, Lake Mary. All teams that we can beat but we can’t discount, because they’re all good teams,” Gardner said.
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DeLand Bulldogs
Coach: Rick Darlington (5th year, 34-15; 259-102 career, 29 seasons).
2025: 12-1, 7A region runner-up.
University Titans (Orange City)
Coach: Bailey Skelley (1st year as head coach).
2025: 1-9, missed 7A playoffs.
Chris Hays can be found on X.com @OS_ChrisHays.