Columbus’ Dunn, Homestead’s Simpson are Miami-Dade Football Coaches of the Year for 4M-3M

Both Columbus and Homestead reached new heights last season.

The Explorers won their second ever state championship -- and second in four years -- and finished in the top 25 of MaxPreps’ national football rankings. The Broncos reached the state title game for the first time, capping a transformative four-year run under the leadership of a first-time coach.

Now, Columbus’ Dave Dunn and Homestead’s Philip Simpson are the Miami Herald’s Miami-Dade County Co-Football Coaches of the Year for Classes 4M-3M.

Dunn is a winner of this award for the third time in his four years with the Explorers and Simpson, in his final year with the Broncos, won for the second season in a row.

Dunn, who was previously the head coach at Columbus nearly two decades ago, returned to Miami in 2019 and immediately led the Explorers to their first state title, but not without some drama. Columbus was .500 with two weeks left in the regular season, then ripped off seven straight victories to win the Class 8A title with a 13-point comeback in the last 3:25.

Since the .500 start to Dunn’s tenure, the Explorers have won 39 of 44 games and state championships in two of the three seasons they took part in the Florida High School Athletic Association’s state series, winning a tri-county title in the other year.

“Our player development is about as good as we can get it,” Dunn said. “You can always get better, but our player development, how we develop our guys -- I feel like we’ve got a pretty good plan in place and it’s paid off.

Columbus’ Class 4M title in 2022 was just as dramatic. The Explorers blocked a field goal at the buzzer in regulation to force overtime, then won the championship 16-13 on a trick play -- a pass from a wide receiver to a quarterback -- in overtime.

No. 23 Columbus’ only loss came to No. 2 Central and even then the Explorers had the ball with a chance to win at the end of the game after trailing by 28 at halftime.

“This team just didn’t flinch,” Dunn said.

Although Homestead came up short in the Class 3M championship, just getting to the title game was a major feat for the Broncos, who won just two games in Simpson’s first season back in 2019.

A year later, Homestead won multiple postseason games for the first time since 2002 and finally got to its first state championship game this year.

When he was interviewing with the Broncos in 2019, Simpson said he got calls from coaches across the area advising him not to take the job, feeling it was next to impossible to build a winner in Homestead. A few weeks ago, he was at a coaching clinic in North Carolina and a coach he’d never met came up to him to thank him for turning around his Broncos -- he was a Homestead alumnus.

“It was such a losing mindset and we’re talking beyond football,” Simpson said. “Now, you wake up and you’ve got local restaurants want to sponsor pregame meals, you’ve got local city representatives coming down and trying to shake hands, and represent the school, support, donate. ... People that I don’t know have been inboxing me nonstop.”

Simpson is now leaving the program in the hands of former assistant coach Ronnie Thornton Jr. as he takes a job as a defensive quality control coach for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

After four years, he leaves the program in a good place.

“It means a lot because I did it my way,” Simpson said. “We did things the right way.”