Walking through Northwood 13 years after graduating, former multi-sport athlete Dalton Brown noticed the walls didn’t change much over the years.
Those walls have never stopped guiding kids from being freshmen to seniors in high school, but for the Northwood community, it wishes it could say the same for another marker of its identity — the Chargers’ head football coach.
The title has gotten a new paint job each of the last four years with Brown being the newest coat for the upcoming 2024 season. Northwood announced on April 16 that Brown will replace Mitch Johnson, who left in late March for the head coach position at South Brunswick High School in Southport, North Carolina. This is Brown’s first head coaching job.
Brown graduated from Northwood in 2011, and he played football, basketball and baseball for the Chargers. After high school, Brown played on the offensive line at Campbell for four years, and he went on to coach as a graduate assistant with South Carolina and Appalachian State. He then made stops at Nation Ford High School in Fort Mill, South Carolina and most recently Leesville Road High School in Raleigh, where he helped the Pride to a 9-3 overall record and a second-round playoff appearance in 2023.
“First, I would like to say that I am home, and I can’t wait to get to work,” Brown said in a press release sent out by Northwood Tuesday. “This is a very unique opportunity where I get to be the head coach of my alma mater and I do not take that lightly. This comes with an extra sense of pride of giving back to the community, school, and program that gave me so much and helped to shape me into the man I am today.”
Living on the Chatham County land where his grandfather built his house in the 1970s, giving back to his alma mater seems to be a multi-year plan for Brown. Brown applied to the position the same day Johnson announced his plans to leave, for being the head coach at Northwood had always been in his mind as something that would be “cool” to do.
A lack of consistency at the football head coaching position hasn’t helped Northwood with building sustained success the past few years. The issue has raised concerns amongst community members and even former Northwood football coaching legend, and Brown’s high school coach, Bill Hall, who led the program for 28 seasons.
Under Hall, the Chargers won three conference championships and made it to the third round of the state playoffs five seasons in a row from 2006-10. In a Facebook post uploaded after Johnson announced his departure, Hall expressed that “(those) kids deserve so much more,” and he called for an increase in supplement pay for coaches in Chatham County to help keep coaches around longer.
When Brown was asked in an interview with the Chatham News & Record if he saw himself building with the Northwood program for years to come, he responded with, “I do.”
“I bought a house in the county,” Brown said. “I’m here. This is home to me. I’m Pittsboro through and through.”
Although the team will have to once again get familiar with a new way of doing things — this time without star tight end and defensive lineman Gus Ritchey, who announced his move to Cary High School earlier this month, Brown has plenty of optimism about the Chargers’ fate next season.
“I see a lot of athletes,” Brown said. “With athletes, we can win. We can put them in different places, and we can line up with anybody and make a run at it.”
The team also has some positive momentum to build off of after going 7-4 and making the state playoffs in 2023.
“They’ve got a foundation of an expectation to win, and all the credit to coach Johnson for getting that going last year,” Brown said.
Brown said his time at App State gave him the blueprint to winning football games and championships. Hall was the first coach to instill in him discipline and attention to detail, values Brown still holds onto in his coaching and teaching.
When it comes to a team identity and approach to the game, Brown wants to hone in on two essential facets of football.
“We’re going to be fast, and we’re going to be physical,” Brown said. “That’s the way I played. That’s the way I was brought up to play. That’s the way I coach. So, that’s the way we’re going to rock and roll.”
