As a player, Jeff Bennett won a Washington big-school state title at Walla Walla and had a college career at Lewis & Clark.

For a boys basketball program as dominant as Cascade, the Cougars have had an unusual amount of coaching turnover in recent years.

The team – which won 4A titles in 2022 and 2023 and took the No. 1 seed into the playoffs the last two seasons, only to lose in the semifinals – is under its fifth coach since 2019.

The latest is Jeff Bennett, promoted from assistant since BJ Dobrkovsky stepped down after last season. Bennett follows Steve Ball (2006-19), Calvin Molan (2019-22), Justin Amaya (2022-24) and Dobrkovsky (2024-25) as Cascade's coach.

It is the third head-coaching job for Bennett, who had two-year stops at 6A Beaverton (2012-14) and 4A Molalla (2017-19). He joined the staff last season when Dobrkovsky took the job.

“The school and the community, I totally fell in love with it,” said Bennett, who also assisted Dobrkovsky at 6A Sprague before landing at Molalla. “I hadn't thought about being a head coach again. When BJ left, it was too big of an opportunity. I wouldn't want to coach anywhere else. It's tailor made for exactly where I'd want to coach.”

Bennett played at Walla Walla High School, where he won a Washington big-school state championship as a senior in 1999. He went on to a college career at Lewis & Clark.

Bennett assisted at Beaverton for seven seasons before becoming the Beavers' head coach, going 17-8 and 9-15 in his two seasons. He admitted to being overwhelmed by the job.

“I was young and wasn't ready to do it,” Bennett said. “It was eye-opening how much work I had to do. I've matured a lot since then. But I loved my experience at Beaverton.”

Bennett moved back to Washington, where he assisted at Richland under Earl Streufert, who has won 464 games at the school since 1999. He assisted at Sprague, then took the job at Molalla one week before the 2017-18 season. He went 4-19 and 2-10 in his two seasons with the Indians.

“Just not a lot of kids that wanted to be athletes,” he said of his time at Molalla.

Bennett, who has four children, got into coaching youth basketball. He reconnected with Dobrkovsky at Cascade last season and helped the Cougars win their fifth consecutive Oregon West Conference title. They lost to Baker in the semifinals for the second year in a row and finished 23-4.

Cascade graduated four starters from last year's team, including first-team all-state guards Kaiden Ford and Landon Knox, who accounted for about 75 percent of the Cougars' scoring.

“We had a lot of good seniors, but we also have a lot of young kids,” Bennett said. “Our core group will be sophomores this year.”

Cascade had two freshmen in the rotation last season in post Brody Anundi, a starter, and wing Brysen Higgins. The 6-foot-5 Anundi is a key building block.

“He's a big, strong kid,” Bennett said. “Coming into this year, I look for Brody to be one of the best interior defenders in the state. His defensive focus, especially as a freshman, was some of the best I've seen.”

In the backcourt, Cascade has younger players who “are going to have to prove themselves,” according to Bennett. Among them is sophomore guard Felix Prenevost, who was on the varsity roster as a freshman.

“He's probably our most skilled ball handler,” Bennett said. “He'll be relied upon for that.”

Cascade can draw on a strong youth program, which was a big draw for Bennett.

“A lot of these smaller schools, 4A and down, don't have an established youth program that has so much community involvement,” he said. “But Cascade does. They have great people that run those.”

Bennett said he and his players embrace the high expectations that are inherent in the Cascade program. He anticipates the Cougars will live up to them.

“The nice thing with 4A this year, there's not a Baker out there right now,” said Bennett, referring to the two-time reigning champion. There's not even us. There are no teams that are just super-duper scary.”