Dillon Mitchell’s dream was to be a head coach. That desire was in part due to watching his father, Jamie Mitchell, have success in the profession over several decades.

Dillon Mitchell was announced Thursday morning as Northeast Lauderdale’s new football coach at a Lauderdale County School Board meeting. After spending the past three seasons as offensive coordinator at Louisville — which won a state championship in 2020 — Dillon Mitchell said he was ready to take on the challenge of running a football program.

Coaching runs in the family, as the elder Mitchell has won two state championships and has amassed a 231-84 record as head coach following this past season, which was Jamie Mitchell’s first at Hillcrest in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Now, Dillon Mitchell has the chance to carry on the family tradition, as Northeast Lauderdale is his first head coaching job.

“This has been my dream since I was a little boy,” Mitchell said. “My dad is a head coach, my granddad was a head coach, so it’s pretty much all I knew. I knew very early on that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to impact kids and build them up to be productive members of society.”

Northeast Lauderdale principal Josh Herrington said Mitchell stood out during the interview process, and he and the other administrators at the school feel it’s a home-run hire.

“When the applications started coming in I was doing some research and digging into the applicants,” Herrington said. “I had already heard about him, and I have a friend who was an assistant for his dad at one time. I knew the quality that was there and heard his name out there as far as the up-and-comers (in coaching). Our committee was drawn to him. We had a lot of good applications, and it wasn’t an easy process. A lot of people with really good credentials applied.”

With his hiring official, Mitchell said he wants to begin implementing his vision for the football program right away.

“We want to be a disciplined football team and a physical football team that other programs don’t want to play,” Mitchell said. “We don’t want to be scheduled for homecoming at Northeast anymore. … We want to attack every single day with a championship mindset, and we have to win off the field before we win on the field. We have to be great students and pillars in the school.”

That vision isn’t limited to the high school, either, Herrington explained.

“He really wants to take and turn around our middle school program and see our seventh and eighth graders get stronger and get the fundamentals down and understand the offensive and defensive basics before they get to the high school,” Herrington said. “He’s going to be down there hands-on working with them in the trenches along with the coaches at the middle school. He also spoke a lot about the pee wee program and how he wants to see that program thrive and be successful, and he’s going to be involved there.” 

The opportunity at Northeast Lauderdale has given Mitchell the chance to fulfill a professional desire, and he said he plans to pour his heart and soul into making the Trojans’ program a successful one.

“It’s who I am,” Mitchell said. “I don’t have that many other hobbies. I do a little bit of hunting and fishing, but football is what I do, and I just can’t wait to get started.”