Ron Rood will be the new head football coach at Ilwaco this fall. Rood, 71, an inductee to the Washington State Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 2009, has compiled a 236-115 overall record as head coach, including winning a state championship at Concrete High School in 1985. “We’ll try to be competitive and I think we can,” Rood said.

ILWACO — A new face will be patrolling the sidelines and calling a different offense for the Fishermen football team this fall.

Ron Rood has been named head football coach for the Ilwaco Fishermen heading into the 2022 season.

Rood, 71, brings a wealth of experience to the Ilwaco sideline, having served as coach at several football-rich schools around Washington since the mid-80s, including winning a state championship along the way.

“I’ve coached for a long time,” said Rood, 71, adding that he was most recently an assistant at Astoria High School the past two seasons alongside head coach Howard Rub.

“My first 10 years were at Fife High School in Tacoma, then I was the head football coach at Concrete High School for 30 years,” he said.

In 1985, in his first season as head coach, Rood guided the Lions to a state championship.

Pull Quote

‘Our offense tries to pretty much overwhelm, numbers wise. It’s great to say we’re gonna whip this guy or beat that guy, but you don’t always do that, so do a lot of double teams and pull people through — kind of outnumber the defenders more than anything.’

Ron Rood

Head football coach for the Ilwaco Fishermen

“I retired as a teacher there. We decided we wanted to go back to central Washington. We went back and lived in Yakima, where I was the head football coach at Zillah High School. And then we decided we wanted to come back to western Washington after four years.”

Rood found familiarity in Pacific County, where he also learned there was a head coaching vacancy.

“We had been to the beach many times, grew up in Longview. I’m a Mark Morris [High School] kid, so I was very familiar with here,” he said.

“The last two years, I had been coaching in Astoria with Howard Rub. We used to come to [football] camp down here when I was at Concrete. Being an assistant was fine, but I kind of wanted to do more of my own stuff. Howard and I are really good friends, but we’re apple and oranges as far as football goes.”

Football philosophy

The Ilwaco Fishermen will utilize a new offense this season under Rood, one that relies heavily on the run.

“As you can imagine, over the span of time, football coaches change their ideas all the time. For the last 10 years we’ve been a real run-heavy team, probably throw a dozen times a game. We’ve had a lot of success with it so that’s what we’ll probably continue to do here,” Rood said.

“Our offense is called the double wing, although it’s kind of a hybrid, sometimes we’re under center and sometimes we’re not. It’s power run, misdirection and play action. Ilwaco ran a similar offense when Kevin McNulty was here.”

The success of the offense won’t rely on one athlete.

“Our offense tries to pretty much overwhelm, numbers wise. It’s great to say we’re gonna whip this guy or beat that guy, but you don’t always do that, so do a lot of double teams and pull people through — kind of outnumber the defenders more than anything,” Rood said.

Off-tackle runs will be the ‘bread and butter’ of the offense.

“It’s better to run five plays 20 times than 20 plays five times,” Rood said.

“There’s basically nine guys at the point of attack. If you don’t adjust to it as a defense, you may lose slowly, but you will lose.”

In the spread-crazy offense in eastern Washington, Rood embraced a dedicated running game at Zillah.

“It’s good to be the odd duck, because teams will only have one week to prepare for us. And it’s hard to simulate what we do in practice,” Rood said.

“Defensively, we’ll play a lot of man pressure. We stunt, change looks and get after them quite a bit.”

Experienced coach

Rood replaces Sean Cease, who served as head coach from 2018-2021, compiling a 14-16 overall record through four seasons (5-4, 2018) (4-5, 2019) (3-2, 2020) (2-5, 2021).

Rood, an inductee to the Washington State Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 2009, compiled a 236-115 overall record as head coach, including a 29-5 mark while serving as head coach at Zillah.

Returning Ilwaco staff include line/tight end coach Brett Hopkins and quarterback/defensive back coach Eric McMillan. New staff includes linebacker coach Matt McKinstry.

“He’ll be a big help, he’s coached 20 years and his father was a grad assistant coach when I was playing in college.”

Rood will also serve as offensive coordinator and call the plays when the Fishermen have the football, while McMillan will call the defensive side.

Early impression

A full picture of the 2022 Ilwaco football roster won’t be revealed until practice officially begins on August 17.

“We had 40 kids sign up, but that doesn’t mean anything. We would love to have mid 30s. We have a strong 8th grade group coming up and would really love to run a junior varsity program, too. I think we’ll be able to,” Rood said.

“So far it looks like we have a lot of returning players from last year who were also pretty good-sized kids. But because of all the other things going on in spring and summer, we’ve never had the whole group on the field yet. But physically we look a lot better than our records have been.”

Changing the culture of program

Building confidence early in the season is crucial, Rood said, particularly for a football program that hasn’t had much success.

“Just knowing how to win and how to handle adversity. And what kind of work, effort and dedication needs to be put in to consistently be good. If we can have some success early, that would be good for us,” Rood said.

Having coached players in the state since 1985, including a couple that reached NFL rosters, Rood said players today are largely the same, with one small difference.

“If there’s any difference, it’s that players (today) like to be told why they’re doing something and how it fits in and what value it has, rather than ‘just go do it’. In my era as a player, it was ‘do it and don’t talk back.’”

Expectations

The Fishermen were on the wrong side of a couple of lopsided games last season, including Pe-Ell (41-6), Morton/Whitepass (48-0) and Raymond (54-8), three teams they’ll face again this fall. Ilwaco will also play football powerhouse Napavine, who has reached the 2B state championship the past two seasons.

“We’ll try to be very competitive and I think we can. We’re playing in arguably the toughest football league in southwest Washington,” Rood said.

“For us, we just have to try to get ourselves up into that elite category where we’re competing every Friday night no matter who we’re playing. It’s a confidence thing.”

Up next: The Fishermen will officially began football practice on Aug. 17.