WOODSTOCK – Even with a grandfather who was a coach, and a father who still coaches, Keil Mitchell was never set on becoming a coach.

The 2009 Woodstock graduate returned from an extended stay in Spain in 2016 and was worried he wouldn’t know what to do with his time.

“I was talking to my dad. He was like, ‘Season’s started up; I’ll send you some film. You can watch some film,’ ” Mitchell said. “He talked to the sophomore coach at the time – coach Jon Brown and Robert Mickey – and asked if they would be willing to let me hang around.”

Three years later, Mitchell still is hanging around. And, so is his father.

Coaching the Woodstock secondary is a family affair for Tom and Keil Mitchell. Tom has coached at Woodstock since 1981 and currently is the varsity cornerbacks coach. Keil coaches the varsity safeties, and also serves as the defensive coordinator for the sophomore team.

“Two great, great men that really teach our kids about respect and discipline and what it means to be a man,” Woodstock head coach Mike Brasile said.

Tom’s father, Jim Mitchell, was a longtime Woodstock tennis coach. Tom is a 1974 Woodstock graduate. He has been a Blue Streaks assistant football coach for nearly four decades, a span that now is on its fifth head coach. He coached Woodstock’s 1983 and 1997 state championship teams.

For the past few years, he’s coached with his son by his side.

“I’ve been fortunate,” Tom said. “How many guys get a chance to have their family on the field?”

Brasile also was a Woodstock assistant when Keil played. He said Keil was “basically our coach on the field.”

At times Keil, a free safety, called the defensive plays himself. Woodstock made the Class 7A playoffs both his junior and senior seasons in 2007 and 2008. Tom was the defensive coordinator at the time.

“The thing that I’ve always appreciated about my dad, not only that he’s been a great father, but he’s always been fair,” Keil said. “He treated everyone the same. He was never too hard on me, but he was never too soft on me either.”

Keil studied film at Wisconsin-Milwaukee and went off to Spain for a few years before returning to Woodstock in 2016. He’s now a kindergarten and first grade bilingual teacher at Valley View Elementary School in McHenry. Tom also taught at Valley View, but is retired now.

If anything, coaching sought out Keil more than Keil sought out coaching.

“I was never against it, but I never really thought about it too much,” Keil said. “It’s something that felt natural. I started coaching when I was in high school, my friend’s little brother’s youth basketball, because we thought it was fun to go to the games.”

Tom said he couldn’t coach all these years without the support of his wife, Kelly Mitchell, who has been putting up with coaches for years. Kelly’s father, Darrell Baxter, was head football coach at Grant and even served as head coach at Woodstock for two seasons in 1967 and 1968, according to IHSA.org records.

“It’s one of the reasons I get to keep doing it, because my wife knows what I’m doing,” Tom said with a laugh.

Tom and Kelly have a daughter, too, Chelsea Oates, who is married and is the mother of Tom and Kelly’s two grandchildren.

Tom and Keil will admit that they have two distinctly different coaching styles.

“He’s developed his own personality, which I think is important,” Tom said. “I tend to be more vocal. He’s able to use his personality, and the kids respond to that. Not everyone has to be the rah-rah type of guy.”

Brasile was a junior lineman on the 1997 state championship team. At the time, Tom was the defensive backs and receivers coach under head coach Ed Brucker. Brasile returned to Woodstock as head coach last year after four seasons as the head coach at Hampshire.

“He’s been a lifelong family friend,” Brasile said about Tom. “Someone I consider my close confidant as a head coach and somebody that if I ever want a real opinion – not just blow some smoke up my rear end – he’s a guy who’s going to tell it to me straight.”

Tom has been one of the constants at Woodstock through the years, the head coaches,and the ups and downs on the field. Keil said he never had to deal with any drama being a coach’s son because “luckily all my teammates liked him.”

Now the two go home, but their thoughts are never far from the football field.

“We’re able to continue talking, what we’re doing for the next day or what our bigger scheme [is],” Keil said. “All throughout the year, he’s always writing up play cards, so it’s always kind of around the house.”

Brasile called the father-son duo “a wealth of knowledge.”

“They’re both just great teachers and great guys to have on the defensive staff,” Brasile said.