Now Coaching for Williams
“I’ve been preparing for this for a long time,” says Aaron Kelton, who, after spending a dozen years as a college assistant and five more coaching high school, is now head football coach at Williams.
His last job, as defensive coordinator at Columbia University, was perfect preparation, Kelton says. “Columbia was a great place for me, both professionally and personally. Columbia helped me in learning how to work with a great group of young men who really understand the importance of academics.”
For a former football player, Kelton isn’t a giant of a man—at not quite six feet, he has maintained his 195-pound playing weight—but there is an evident intensity when he says, “I bring attitude and energy.”
An all-state football player at Wellesley (Mass.) High School, the Boston-born Kelton also played baseball and basketball. He enrolled as a business major at Springfield College but graduated with a degree in psychology. “Just crunching numbers and sitting behind a desk wasn’t for me. I enjoy people, especially young people. So now I’m a football coach—where I use my psych degree every day.”
He started at quarterback for Springfield, though his coaching responsibilities have largely been on the defensive side of the line. “I have a passion about defense, but since I played quarterback in college, I tend to think offensively about how I would attack a defense. But I don’t have to do it all myself. Both the coordinators here are the same after 6-2, 6-2 and 8-0 seasons. My job is to build on that success.” Of last year’s 22 starters, 18 are returning for the fall 2010 season, along with defensive coordinator George McCormack and Bill Barrale, offensive coordinator.
Kelton cites Columbia head coach Norries Wilson as an important influence. “Coach Wilson really mentored me. He helped prepare me for the job I have here at Williams. His being the first African-American coach in the Ivy League, we had those kinds of conversations.” Kelton himself brings the experience of being both a student and, later, a counselor in the Metco Program, a Massachusetts diversity initiative that since 1966 has enabled thousands of metropolitan Boston and Springfield students to attend public schools in surrounding communities. Kelton is completing a master’s degree in integrated studies at Virginia State, where he coached for five years. “But I’m a football coach, first and last.”
Coming to Williamstown means more to Kelton than just a first shot at a job as head coach. “The College has its own reputation, a tremendous history, a winning tradition. Williams wants to see success from student athletes, and that helped entice me to come from Columbia.” Rural Williamstown may be different from the bustle of Morningside Heights, but, having once coached in West Virginia (“I lived in a town with one stoplight”), a country setting feels familiar enough to Kelton. The adjustment may be greater for his wife Charlotte, who grew up outside the nation’s capital, and his 18-year-old daughter, Kelsi. “But people have been great, warm and welcoming.”
The move to the College also means a shift to Division III play. “The difference at Division I is dealing with a bigger budget and bigger players. But there are some really good Division III players—we get guys that Division I misses on. They’re looking for somebody to compete right away, but at Williams we can wait a year, and wait for him to develop into a solid player.”
It is clear Kelton has quickly adapted to the culture of Williams. “The Amherst game is all everybody talks about. But that’s also college football at its finest: great rivalries. And Williams-Amherst is a special rivalry, known throughout the nation. To be a part of that is very exciting to me.”
Kelton’s predecessor, Mike Whalen, returned to his alma mater, Wesleyan, after his Williams teams amassed a record of 38 wins and 10 losses in six seasons. His presence on the opposite sideline may bring an added incentive to the Wesleyan game, too, but Kelton takes a much larger view. “It’s doesn’t matter who is playing. I just say to the kids every week, ‘Whoever Williams plays? That’s going to be the best game in the country.’”