Cooper quickly gets to work at Hardin Northern

Apr. 21—Jerry Cooper was working the room — the lunch room at Hardin Northern High School — on Friday a day after being named the Polar Bears' football coach.

He wasn't looking for calzones or chef's salads, though. He was looking for football players.

"I was recruiting every kid that even looked like a football player and giving them a form to sign up," Cooper said, with a laugh.

Cooper, the head football coach at Shawnee the last five seasons, was diving head first into his new job, as expected. What was unexpected was the move he made in going from a Division III football program to a Division VII school.

Cooper has a 274-142 career record in 38 years as a head coach at Lucas, Waynesfield-Goshen, Hicksville, Bath, Columbus Grove, Lima Central Catholic, Seymour (Tenn.) and Shawnee. His 2003 Columbus Grove team won a state championship and he has coached 19 teams into the Ohio High School High School Athletic Association playoffs.

His Bath, Columbus Grove and LCC teams reached the playoffs 16 of the 21 years he coached there.

LCC had not been to the playoffs for 15 years when he was hired there in 2005. But the turnaround was immediate for the Thunderbirds, who won 11 games in his first season as their coach.

In five seasons at Shawnee his teams had a 23-28 record. A 7-5 record, including a win in the first round of the playoffs in 2021, was the best of those five teams and the only one with a winning record.

Cooper said he felt "a little bit of a level of frustration" over Shawnee's record and some other issues at the school.

"So I decided I was just going to see what was out there," he said.

He said he had inquiries from two schools bigger than Hardin Northern which were searching for a football coach but decided smaller was a better fit for him.

Cooper was hired in May 2022 as the commissioner of the Northwest Central Conference, the league home of Hardin Northern, which gave him some familiarity with the NWCC. But it wasn't until Hardin Northern principal Andrew Cano approached him about its head football coach's job opening that he began to pursue it.

"After they had someone turn down their football job, he reached out and said, 'Hey, do you have any interest in doing that?' " Cooper said.

Hardin Northern has reached the playoffs three times in the last four years — last season, in 2021 and in 2019. It was Division VI state champion in 2004 with a roster of 31 players and was state runner-up in 2002.

Last fall, the Polar Bears had a 6-5 record with a roster of 27 players. Only three of those players were seniors, which Cooper says could be a reason for optimism.

"If we can add a decent freshman class to that and pick up a few more then we can add JV football. They didn't play JV football last year," he said.

Cooper grew up as the youngest of 10 children in his family in Mount Gilead in Morrow County. He began his coaching career early as a volunteer assistant at his high school after a knee injury during his freshman year of football at Otterbein University.

Cooper, 63, says about coaching, "I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing."

Hardin Northern is acquiring two very successful coaches with the hiring of Cooper and former Liberty-Benton head coach Tim Nichols as its offensive coordinator. Nichols' teams at Liberty-Benton went 115-33 in 14 seasons, went to the playoffs nine times and won the Blanchard Valley Conference six times.

"It was kind of a package deal," Cooper said. "Anytime you go somewhere new or someplace different you kind of re-energize yourself. I'm looking forward to that. It's a new group of kids and teachers and coaches and administrators to work with."

Cooper's nine years at Lima Central Catholic are the longest he has stayed at a school. He stayed at Bath for seven years and was at Columbus Grove and Shawnee for five years each.

"The levels of experience I've had, I think that's one thing that is obviously a positive. I think I still have a lot of energy and enthusiasm to bring to the kids," he said.

"Hopefully, those guys will realize that deep down I'm a guy with what I call kind of old school back in the day football roots. I think those things are still valid in today's football. And I still have drive and a passion to coach high school football."