Northwood football coach Ken James had zero head coaching experience when he took over for John Boles beginning with the 1986 season.

Boles had moved on to coach at Genoa, and James inherited a program that had just left the defunct Lakeshore Conference for the bigger Suburban Lakes League. Northwood had the smallest enrollment in the SLL.

“My first year was Northwood's first year in the SLL, and that probably helped me get the job,” James recalled. “It wasn't a real attractive (coaching) job. We went from being a school on par enrollment-wise, on a level playing field, to a situation where we had a lot less kids to work with than the other SLL schools. We were the smallest school in the league, by far.

“I went 1-9 my first two years. My first year, we had 32 kids on the team. We got up to the mid-30s or so after two or three years, and then we got it up to 45.”

James is now in his 25th season as the Rangers' head coach, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a more respected program in Northwest Ohio.

The Rangers won one SLL championship – Northwood and Elmwood tied for the title in 1991 – before leaving that

 league for the Toledo Area Athletic Conference in 2000. Since joining the TAAC, the Rangers have won seven conference championships, including the last three, and have made five trips to the state playoffs.

James, who teaches English at Northwood and was the school's athletic director for many years, has a 130-123 career record.

“We struggled in the mid-'90s, when we didn't have the numbers,” James said.

What's remarkable about James' program is the number of former Northwood players who come back to coach for him. James estimates that as many as 20 former players have coached for their alma mater, either at the elementary, junior high or high school level. And once those coaches come back, they usually stick around.

“I've been fortunate they're not coming in and out every year,” James said. “They've stayed for a while. Dave Russell (who played for Boles) has been with me for about 10 years. I try to get guys into the junior high and work their way up.”

Todd Welch, 31, the Rangers' running backs coach, is going to school to become a teacher. He was on James' staff when he was “23 or 24” and left for a few years to open up a pet store at Great Eastern.

Welch, who as a 280-pound fullback helped Northwood finish 7-3 his senior year, said working with James is “awesome.”

“Not just the football aspect of it but how he runs his program with the kids, teaching life lessons,” Welch said. “My father passed away when I was 8, and I always kind of looked up to Ken like a father figure. He's got a relationship with all the kids and all of us coaches, and it's fun to be around. He runs things almost like a college program would be run, with as much time as he puts in during the offseason. We do strength and conditioning four days a week in the summer. It's a lot of time.

“All of the guys he has coaching for him who played for him, they all coached at the middle school,” Welch added. “He wants to see how we react to things. He teaches that it's not how you act when things are going good, it's how you react if things are going bad. He demands respect. When I was playing and now that I'm working for him, you respect him. As much time and effort as he puts into the program and the school, you have to.”

Welch added that the way in which James approaches certain situations can often be an eye-opening experience.

“The way he handles things, I'm always thinking, 'wow, that's a great way to think of things,' ” Welch said. “Like how to handle kids. A lot of us (coaches) are still kind of younger guys. The first time I coached for him on varsity, I was kind of a hothead and he never disciplined people in front of you. He would call you up at night and say, 'Instead of doing it this way, you could have handled it that way.' He's just a great mentor. He obviously knows what he's doing. I consider myself lucky to come back and coach with him. I'm learning a lot.”

Some of James' former players who are currently on the varsity staff include Shawn Aiello, Chris Genson and Matt Donegan.

“Shawn played on the SLL title team in 1991 and started coaching junior high back in the mid-1990s,” James said. “He was our defensive coordinator in 2002 when we went 10-0. He was working for Chrysler and got transferred to Illinois, and he just came back last season. He's one of our D-line coaches and special teams coordinator.

“Chris played on the team I would say probably saved my job. We had two 1-9 years and he played on the 6-4 team, his senior year, in 1988. He coached in the late '90s and got transferred to Tennessee and has been back for the last three years.”

Donegan, who also coached the Rangers' basketball team, was the quarterback on Northwood's undefeated team in 2002.

“He started coaching junior high a couple years after he graduated, in 2005,” James said. “He moved up to varsity two years ago and is now our quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. He left football to coach basketball for one year and resigned and came back.”

Ken isn't the only James in the family who has a stake in Northwood football.

His wife, Kris, is the team statistician and their daughter, Chelsea, is the Rangers' water girl/manager. James' son, Nate, graduated from Northwood in 2009 and served as a junior high coach last season. He now coaches the varsity squad's defensive backs.

“Nate played for me all through high school and he knows what I'm like,” Ken said. “He's pretty fiery and emotional, but he's young and he relates well with the kids. It's been enjoyable; coaching him was fun. I made sure I never coached whatever position he was playing.”

James' longest-serving assistant coach is Paul Gercak. The players call him “coach Rock.”

“Paul was one of my assistants when I got here,” James said. “I had been coaching at Lima Central Catholic when I moved here, so I inherited the coaches they had here. Paul was a guy who was in coaching for nothing other than helping the kids. He made no bones about the fact that whatever makes the kids better, he would do whatever he had to do. He stayed with me for about 15 years.”

Gercak was the Rangers' defensive coordinator, but he has not been a full-time staffer for several years.

“He still comes in on Tuesdays and watches tape and gives me suggestions on what he thinks we need to do,” James said. “He's still attached to the program in a peripheral sense. Part of what I think the kids learn from Paul is that the team and the school are most important. He never got a whole lot of notoriety for what he did, but he had such a connection with the kids that whenever the players come back to coach, they still have that connection.”

James added that his assistants are usually an “extension” of himself. He reasons that because the coaches played in James' system, they know what to expect when they come back.

“They went through it,” James said. “If they bought into what was going on when they were here, they're extensions of me. All of them are strong-willed individuals. I can give them a position to coach and they're going to try to make it the best one in the program. They know how to compete and they know how hard they need to work. First and foremost, they're in it for the kids.”

James hosts an annual golf outing at Chippewa every June for former players and coaches, who usually flock to the event to catch up on how the football program is doing.

“We have guys travel in from Indiana and other parts of Ohio,” James said. “There's still a connection there that they have. That's part of the reason I think guys come back and coach, they feel connected to the program. Not because of me, but because of the experience they had.”

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