Ralph Loos helped the Northampton girls basketball team to its first-ever state Division 1 Tournament championship last winter.
Next winter, he hopes to start the process of leading the Frontier Regional program back to the top.
“I definitely felt like (being a head coach) was something I was ready to do and was looking forward to,” said Loos, 39, on Wednesday night.
Loos, the Hamp varsity assistant and junior varsity coach at for the past two seasons, will take over a Red Hawks varsity squad next year that went 1-19 last year and missed the postseason for the first time in the program’s history.
“We are hopeful that he’ll bring some energy to the program,” Frontier athletic director Marty Sanderson said. “His ideas for how to bring the program back meshed with our ideas for how to get the progam going again.”
Loos has already met with the Frontier players and told them he expects to be back in the postseason next year.
“I saw them a few times last year,” Loos said. “To me, if we are not in the tournament, I’m thoroughly disappointed. They are good athletes. At the bare minimun, that is my expectation, to get to the tournament and hopefully make some noise.”
Along with assisting at Northampton under coach Tom Parent, Loos coaches in both AAU and the Bay State Games. Before coaching at Hamp, Loos coached in the Suburban League in Amherst.
After winning the state title last year, “you have to sort of temper your expectations,” he said. “You have to know that it’s not going to be like that every year.
“But it reinforced my philosophy that good defense wins everything. I spent a lot of time picking up stuff from Coach Parent and (the other assistants). I tried to pick their brains as coaches who have seen more than I have. I got a lot out of that.”
Frontier won its first western Mass. girls basketball title in 1972 and has reached the finals 15 times, winning it six times. The last championship came in 2000. The Red Hawks reached their lone state championship game in 1988, where they lost to Cohasset 54-44.
“For me to leave Northampton, it was going to take a really great opportunity. I know the tradition (at Frontier) and I know that brings a lot of expectations.”