After a long wait, the Alpena High School football team has their new head coach. Aaron Sims will lead the Wildcats onto the field during the 2016 season.

“I am excited about it,” Sims said. “I’m looking forward to getting up to the area with my family. I’m familiar with the area because of my wife and we have been up here before. I’m happy to be here and get another opportunity at a bigger program with potential to be a winner.”

Sims take over Alpena’s program after former coach Brad Moughon resigned in April. This will mark Alpena’s sixth head coach in the last eight years, but Alpena Athletic Director Tim Storch feels after months of interviews, Sims is the right coach to bring stability and a winning tradition to a program that has been in need of it for quite some time.

“Our first posting was in April and we had viable candidates, but weren’t sure of our staff needs. The second posting we had better knowledge and had over 30 candidates apply for the position. Our committee spoke with Aaron on Thursday and completed a follow up interview over the the weekend,” Storch said. “From a football standpoint, he is very good. He blew us away in the interviews and he really impressed us with his organization and willingness to put in 16-18 hours a day between coaching and teaching. We were sold and we are extremely happy with the route we took and we feel we hit a home run with this signing.”

Sims brings an impressive resume with him, having recently coached at Hesperia High School, a Division 7 program for the past two seasons. During his time coaching the Panthers, the team posted a 1-8 record in 2014, but rebounded a year ago, going a perfect 9-0 in the regular season before a first round playoff loss. Sims was nominated for the Regional 3 coach of the year during the 2015 season.

Along with his most recent position at Hesperia, Sims has coached at Tri-County and Reed City. The Olivet College graduate also spent time coaching at his alma mater.

Sims will feature a Wing-T offense which he has run throughout his coaching career and on the opposite side of the ball plans to mix and match defensive fronts.

“Football is football. I’ve been looking at the little bit of the film that has been available to me. I am a Wing-T guy and I am very comfortable with it and I know how to fix it if needed. The transition is going to be fun at a bigger school with more kids. I’m just going to try and create a formula to put the kids in positions to be successful,” Sims said.

For the first time in a long time, the sidelines will look much different during the upcoming 2016 season as Alpena will have several new faces on their coaching staff. Along with Sims, Eric Mitchell will be the lone coach returning from last year’s staff. Cody Kangas, a former assistant football coach at Traverse City Central will be another new face on the Alpena sideline that will try and help lead this program in a new direction.

“Eric and Cody are both currently on staff as assistants. Eric was an assistant on last years team and Cody comes in with plenty of coaching experience and we were really impressed with him. There are numerous local names that have shown interest in assistant coaching positions, but Aaron will be sitting in on those interviews and it will be up to him to determine his staff. We have confidence in Aaron and we feel he’s going to take our program to higher levels,” Storch said.

It will be no easy task for Sims as he takes over an Alpena program that has had little success in its history. The Wildcats’ last winning season and only playoff appearance came in 2004 when the team finished the regular season going 7-2 before being knocked off in the first round of the playoffs by Bay City Western.

Since then, Alpena has a 23-75 overall record and has surpassed three wins in a season just once.

Sims is excited about the challenges and opportunities to try and bring a winning program to a school and community that is hungry for one.

“It’s going to be important to get guys who can work together towards achieving one ultimate goal. We are going to work hard every day to try and improve. That’s the only way to do it,” Sims said.

Jonny Zawacki can be reached via email at jzawacki@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5690.