MUSKEGON – Terry Mitchell has been all over the football world, playing for lots of different teams at various levels, but there seems to be a common theme throughout his career.

He wins championships.

Mitchell, who was born in Alabama and played his high school football in Port Huron, started his college football career at Harper College in Illinois and was part of two small-school national championship teams. He also won a track national title at Harper.

He transferred to Grand Valley State University, where he was a member of back-to-back Division 2 national championship teams.

He played for the old Saginaw Sting in the Continental Indoor Football league and won a championship.

New Ironmen head coach Terry Mitchell

He played for the old West Michigan Force, an 11-man semipro team, and won a league championship.

He played for the Muskegon Mustangs and won another semipro championship.

He played for the West Michigan Ironmen in 2021 and won a league championship.

You get the idea. Mitchell has been a winner pretty much wherever he’s gone, which is undoubtedly one reason why he has been named the new head coach of the Ironmen. He replaces Nate Smith, who will remain with the team as general manager and will also have broad new responsibilities running the Great Lakes Arena Alliance, the second-year league that the Ironmen helped create.

Like Mitchell, the Ironmen have bounced around to different leagues since they first took the field back in 2016, and have always been winners. The team expects that tradition to continue beginning Feb. 24, when the Ironmen will host their first home game of the season.

Smith thinks Mitchell will be a perfect fit, particularly after serving the past two seasons as coordinator of the Ironmen’s high-flying offense.

Ironmen General Manager Nate Smith, who is giving up his coaching duties.

“When we asked Terry Mitchell to become offensive coordinator, we could foresee him being the head coach when he was ready,” said Smith, who will remain head football coach at Fruitport High School. “It’s time for somebody else so I can focus on our league and my work at Fruitport.

“Terry has the credentials. He was an All-American and national champion at Grand Valley. He’s very respected, knows the game, and he and (longtime Ironmen quarterback) Alex Carder work very well together. He was about as good of a choice as you can imagine.”

Mitchell, who turned 40 on Monday, said he was first offered the head coaching job before last season but declined, so Smith stayed on for one more year.

Mitchell gave a different answer when he was asked to take the job again this year, explaining that he felt more comfortable.

“It was just my relationship with the players, being more acclimated with the game, having some time under my belt as offensive coordinator, learning what Nate did and soaking up all that information,” he said.

Mitchell first came to the Ironmen back in 2016 as a receiver, even though he missed that entire first season with a hamstring injury.

He switched to linebacker in 2018, explaining that he worked out and tried to add some bulk as a receiver, but added a bit too much.

“I went from about 218 pounds to about 250,” he said.

Mitchell retired as a player in 2020 and became the Ironmen’s wide receiver coach, but that season lasted only one game due to COVID.

He returned to the team as a player in 2021, then became the offensive coordinator the past two years.

The Ironmen have put a lot of points on the board since Mitchell started directing the offense. That was particularly true when they went undefeated last year and won the first Great Lakes Arena Alliance championship.

“I’m very proud of my guys,” Mitchell said about the offensive players he’s coached. “They did everything I asked of them. They worked their butts off in practice. We have a first-class quarterback in Alex Carder – there aren’t too many like him – and he made my job a lot easier.”

Mitchell’s promotion means a change of direction for Smith, who became the Ironmen’s general manager when the team was established in 2015 and continues in that role.

Smith took over as head coach in 2019 and has put together an outstanding record, posting an overall 27-2 mark. That includes a 22-1 regular season record and a 5-2 playoff mark. His teams have won three league championships, including last year’s. Smith was named coach of the year twice and general manager of the year once in various leagues.

He will remain very much involved with the Ironmen, but in a broader capacity. Smith will spend much of his time helping to develop new teams as commissioner of the Great Lakes Arena Alliance, a Midwest-based league that the Ironmen own.

Last season, in its first year of existence, the league had four teams – the Ironmen, Battle Creek Smoke, Soutwest Michigan Apex and Ohio Blitz.

This season the league already has a strong commitment from a new team in Detroit, and the Battle Creek team is expected to return. Smith said there have also been preliminary discussions with potential team owners in Toledo, Kalamazoo, Lima, Ohio and even a city in Alabama.

Having a reliable league to compete in has been an ongoing issue for the Ironmen, who are very popular in Muskegon and draw a lot of fans, but need opponents from cities within a one-day travel distance due to budget realities.

“This year, going in, we knew we needed to have somebody take the point on organizing and leading the league and getting it to where it needs to be,” Smith said. “We’ve come to a place where we know, to be sustainable, it has to be a regional league. The markets we’re in are not going to sustain $20,000 road trips.

“If we’re going to make this happen, somebody has to give it their full attention. I am going to spend my time trying to help build some of these organizations.”