SYRACUSE — After going 5-25 during his first three years as the head coach of the Wawasee football team, Tom Wogomon has gone 13-7 the past two seasons, with this year's 7-3 campaign earning him the label of Times-Union Area Football Coach of the Year. Coming to Wawasee in 2007 after serving as an assistant at East Noble, Wogomon was aware he wasn't walking into an ideal situation. "I knew there was a challenge in front of me, but that's true for anyone who gets into head coaching," Wogomon said. "The struggles were there, but it wasn't because of the kids' effort, it was just because of the numbers. We had kids that should have been playing on Saturday (in junior varsity games), but we had them playing Friday." In his first season at Wawasee, Wogomon was coaching a team with such low numbers that a freshman team couldn't be fielded. "My last game at East Noble was actually here at Wawasee (a 45-28 sectional loss) under Chris Dupew in 2006," Wogomon said. "When looking at that scouting report, we saw Wawasee was a senior-dominated team that year. I knew they had some good kids coming back, but until you jump in and get your feet wet, you don't really know what to expect." In the three years prior to Wogomon's arrival, with Joe Rietveld leading the way, the Warriors had gone 29-8 including a trip to the state finals in 2004. With many of those players gone, the Wawasee coaching position became vacant, and Wogomon was up for the challenge. "During the interview process, I was told repeatedly this would be a rebuild, and there would be some tough times because of those small classes," Wogomon said. "It's difficult when you have one class with a whole lot of players, but when there's two, it's very difficult." After weathering those first three seasons, Wogomon began to notice a change in his players, although it was actually in their offseason preparation. During a weight-lifting competition in February 2010 at Goshen High School, he noticed a change in his guys as they performed well against many of the guys they see on the football field. "It was the training in the weight room when we began to look at ourselves as equals in the Northern Lakes Conference," he said. "When we went to that weight-lifting competition in February, you can talk about a lot of things that will make you better, but it takes confidence." That confidence lasted all the way through summer training and two-a-days, but a 20-0 loss at Whitko in the opening week of the 2010 season, could have deterred all that. "In 2010, Whitko pasted us 20-0," Wogomon said. "At the moment, having come off seasons of 2-8, 1-9 and 2-8, we were at a pivotal moment. Whitko had just beaten us in every phase. As a team, we needed to decide if it was going to be the same-old, same-old or if we were going to turn it around." As it was, the Warriors went with the latter, finishing the season at 6-4, finishing second in the NLC. During that 2010 season, Wawasee's 27-17 win at Plymouth was a big one for the Warriors, but another big victory for Wogomon was this season's 20-12 conquest at NorthWood. "During my tenure, that NorthWood game may have been our best," he said. "That was the most fundamentally sound game for us. There had only been two other times when a Wawasee team had returned home from that trip with a happy bus ride." That win over NorthWood kick-started a five-game winning streak for the Warriors, which just happened to end back at NorthWood with a 14-10 first-round sectional loss. "One thing we talked about in the offseason was competiting for the NLC title, which we did, falling four points shy against Concord," Wogomon said. "We were able to check that off as a program. Now, we're still a ways from what we want to do in the playoffs. We just still need to make strides." And those strides were made with a defense that surrendered just 11.4 points per game, anchored by a defensive line of seniors Dimitri Kaplanis, John Essex and Justin Fick, as well as junior Chad Eppley. "With a front like we had, you call a lot of base defenses," he said. And this season, it was him calling those defensive plays, which was a departure from previous seasons. "I played defense at Goshen and was a defensive coordinator at East Noble, and then I called the offense here the first four years," Wogomon said. "This year, I called just the defense, which was out of necessity. I wouldn't say it was me though, it was the players. On defense, I've always kept it simple. Just know the scheme." And like all high school coaches know, players are continually coming and going, and despite losing a lot of seniors this year, Wogomon isn't fretting about keeping the wins consistent. "I'm excited about what is coming back next year," he said. "We had an outstanding ninth grade class, which will be pushing some juniors and maybe some seniors next year. Nothing beats competition in the individual ranks. Competition for starting jobs is what began to turn this program around."
