OTTUMWA — Zach Wigle sends a simple message to his Ottumwa football players — have fun.

With those good times, winning should take care of itself.

Wigle, who is in his first year as head coach at Ottumwa, will be one of the youngest head coaches in all of Class 4A in the state of Iowa.

He takes over for longtime Bulldog head coach Tom Kopatich, bearer of Ottumwa’s 10 all-time playoff berths.

Wigle is ready to go.

“The No. 1 goal that I set out when I took this job is to make this a great experience for these football players. These are high school kids that are playing a game and they have to have fun. Obviously a part of that’s winning,” said Wigle, who is 28 years old and in the midst of his first head coaching job after being an assistant the past couple seasons for Ottumwa.

Wigle takes over a program with a very successful winning tradition and brings with him a new philosophy at tackling defenses.

Kopatich’s winning ways dominated the CIML Metro for years, but the Bulldogs have not won an outright conference crown since 2004. Wigle hopes to bring in fresh ideas and a system that differs from Kopatich’s approach.

“We’re going to have a lot of different formations, but it’s all basically a variation of an offense that was started 50 years ago. It’s something that’s worked and hopefully we’re going to continue to get better at what we’re doing,” said Wigle.

Implementing something new is never as easy as it sounds, but Wigle will give it all he has in attempt to get Ottumwa back on top.

“It’s a whole new offensive system. So we’ve had three weeks to work with this minus the summer. It’s all new,” said Wigle.

One resonating theme that has rubbed off from Kopatich’s mentorship is the team concept. It led to two state titles for Kopatich up at Cedar Rapids LaSalle early in his career and produced some of the best teams Ottumwa has ever put out on a football field. Kopatich won well over 100 games in his tenure in the River City. The formula for that winning brand of football was always team-first.

“It’s not about this guy, it’s not about that guy. You do 1/11th every play and that’s all you can do. If the other guy doesn’t do it, it’s not going to work,” said Wigle. “It doesn’t matter how many guys we have that are going to be this or that, it’s about working together as one unit.”

But for the first time in 19 seasons, there will be no Tom Kopatich.

The sidelines won’t ever be the same.