ROSSFORD – Southview’s girls basketball team won six Northern Lakes League and seven sectional
championships during Kevin Mitchell’s 16 seasons as head coach.
Rossford is hoping he can lead the Bulldogs’ program to similar success.
The long-time Rossford resident and former Bulldog assistant coach has been named the school’s head
coach, replacing Lorie Pietrasz, who resigned after three seasons.
The Bulldogs have struggled during recent seasons, including records of 2-20 overall and 1-13 in the NLL
last season.
"Competing for league titles is your ultimate goal … that’s what the goal is for every team,"
said Mitchell, who was 240-110 at Southview from 1984-2000. His teams went undefeated in league play
four times.
Mitchell was a girls varsity assistant for the Bulldogs for three seasons (2004-2007). Rossford advanced
to the district final in 2006.
"There a lot of good programs in the NLL … Perrysburg, Northview, Southview, Anthony Wayne and we
want to lift our standards up to theirs," said Mitchell, who took Southview to a regional
championship game. "You take what those teams do and what they’re doing to be successful, and see
how you can improve your program."
Mitchell said his team meets each day on the NLL logo in Rossford’s gym.
"That’s a reminder to the girls about what our goal is," Mitchell said. "The road will be
difficult, but that’s what we want to do."
Rossford will join the newly-formed Northern Buckeye Conference for the 2011-12 school year where it will
be joined by Eastwood, Genoa, Lake, Otsego, Woodmore and two other yet-to-be named schools.
"The kids are working real hard and they’ve been very receptive to the things we’re trying to
do," Mitchell said. "For the most part, they’re pretty fundamentally sound from a basketball
standpoint. They’ve been very positive about getting things done.
"We’ve talked a lot about being positive, our being positive as coaches and being positive as
teammates. We’ve talked about being mentally tougher and finishing off games with wins."
Last season, Rossford scored an average of 31.9 points per game and allowed 50.8.
"We’re going to get up and down the floor. The returning kids we have are pretty athletic,"
Mitchell said. "We’re not particularly tall, so that’s what we’re going to have to do to create
shots for ourselves. We don’t have a lot of height.
"In our summer games, we’ve tried to run and press, and the kids have been real receptive to that.
Kids would prefer to run and press. They don’t want to walk the ball up and down the floor."
Mitchell and his family have lived in Rossford for 14 years. Mitchell’s wife, Laurie, grew up in Rossford
and is a 1976 graduate of the school.
Their daughter, Alaina, will be a freshman in the fall and she plays basketball. Their son, Tyler, is a
2008 Rossford graduate.
"When we received his résumé and saw he was interested in the job, we were thrilled," Rossford
athletics director Chuck Cox said. "He’s a great coach and a first-class individual. We’re excited
to have him and we’re looking forward to him building our program."
Mitchell already is familiar with some of the players, having coached them in the summer.
"I had such a great experience at Southview, great kids, a lot of success and I wanted the same
thing for my daughter and the other kids," Mitchell said of why he applied for the job.
Mitchell is hoping to increase the number of players in the program, adding he’s optimistic the Bulldogs
will have a freshmen team this winter for the first time in several seasons.
He’s going to have the junior high teams use many of the same offenses and defenses and terminology as
the varsity and junior varsity teams.
He’s also going to develop an elementary program, including skill camps for third- and fourth-graders,
and getting the fifth- and sixth-grade teams organized so they can play in a league.
"We want to get some continuity in our program from the high school on down," he said.
Mitchell also was Rossford’s eighth grade girls coach in 2004 and 2005, and was a varsity assistant
football coach last fall.