It has been a couple years since Dom Prologo stood on the sidelines of a football field. But it doesn’t mean his passion for coaching was gone.

Now, Prologo has another shot coaching after a couple years away after he was named the head coach at Liberty during the school district’s meeting Thursday.

Things lined up for Prologo and the Leopards. He had been around the program the last couple years since his daughter was the Leopards’ athletic trainer. And after meeting with the administration, he realized the school’s vision for the team was similar to his own.

“Every kid should be encouraged by their coaches to go play other sports,” Prologo said. “It’s encouraged, not discouraged. There should never be a time that a player plays football, and because of the success of the football team going to the state finals every year — three years in a row basically — basketball’s out of the question.”

The second half of the “vision” is a willingness to handle all student-athletes equally, according to Prologo.

“The other part of the vision is no matter what their socioeconomic background is, every kid is going to be getting the same opportunity and treated the same way, whether it’s in the classroom, on the football field,” Prologo said. “It doesn’t matter who they are, and that’s how it’s supposed to be and that’s what they’re all about here.”

Prologo will take over for Joe Simon, who stepped down after four years leading the Leopards.

Previously, Prologo spent the 2020-22 seasons as the head coach at Warren JFK, leading the Eagles to the state championship game twice. He went 32-8 during his time with the Eagles after being an assistant coach.

Prologo said his Liberty coaching staff will feature some members of last season’s crew. He wants to develop a connection with the student-athletes over the course of the year, and he believes some of the previous coaches will help with “continuity.”

Prologo has coached at the high school level since 1986, and he knows how he wants the program to run moving forward. His approach is structured around “if you’re not having success, you have to work harder.”

He said he hopes the Leopards buy into that mentality, because they will learn to work through the tough times.

“When you walk in, there’s gonna be one of two things that happen,” Prologo said. “One, the kids will take ownership of what we’re asking them to do and you have an immediate turnaround, or there is a culture shock because the accountability we ask our kids to fall under is so much different than most other places.

“Other coaches might say, ‘we do the same things.’ Great, but I know what we ask our kids to do, and maybe the kids at Liberty haven’t gone through that in a long time, so it’s gonna be a little bit of a culture shock. So a year from now, I hope the kids take leadership roles and ownership of our program and the things that are required to be champions are instilled, and now we can get them to learn how to work hard.”