SYRACUSE — After leading the Wawasee High School football program from the Northern Lakes Conference cellar to three straight winning seasons, head coach Tom Wogomon has decided to head home.

In a decision made public Tuesday morning, Wogomon has resigned as head coach of the Wawasee football program to take the open football position at Northridge, the school corporation in which the Wogomon family live.

After suffering through three down seasons in his first three years, Wogomon helped Wawasee to winning records in each of his final three years. In 2012, Wawasee reached the sectional championship for the first time since 2004 and were runners-up in the NLC in 2011.

Overall, Wogomon was 25-37 in six seasons as head coach for the Warriors. Wawasee have not announced a replacement as of Tuesday morning.

“I told the team today, and of course it wasn’t an easy thing to do,” Wogomon said in a phone interview this afternoon. “I had to take it with a grain of salt because its a unique situation to move within the Northern Lakes Conference. The kids that I have coached for years, that was the hard part today. But I had to look to the future and the opportunity that was there.

“I have spent 19 years driving at least 30 minutes to practice, to work. That’s where the opportunity to coach at Northridge really was one I couldn’t pass up. I set my roots in that community. I had a son graduate from there. I want to know more of my daughter’s friends. I was anxious and a little bit jealous not being able to do that for so many years.

“I can’t begin to tell you how much respect I have for (former NHS head coach) Jon Kirkton and what he did for that school,” Wogomon continued about his future. “He dealt with a lot of the same things I dealt with here when I started at Wawasee. I’m hoping to bring some success to that program, because those kids work very hard, you could always see that when you played them.

“I don’t have a magic potion to winning. It just starts with a belief in each other. That’s what we did here the last two years, we believed in ourselves on and off the field.

“I leave Wawasee with no bad taste in my mouth, no bad blood, no real need to leave. It was just a good opportunity for me and my family to move closer to home and be able to coach at a school I’m familiar with. I had to look five years down the road.”