'It's just special': Mogadore boys basketball coach Russ Swartz's journey to 500 wins

What does 500 wins mean to Russ Swartz?

"That I've been doing this a long time," Swartz said of the milestone he hit with Tuesday's tournament win over Lake Ridge Academy. "Yeah, 36 years, that's a long time."

Fair enough, but plenty of coaches put a few decades in and don't get anywhere near 500 wins. There's something to be said for his winning percentage, right?

For the speed at which he approached 500 wins.

"Well, that's a tribute to a lot of things that obviously are not my control, but I'm a big system and culture guy," Swartz said. "We've been fortunate, I say it all the time, over the years to have kids buy into what our system and culture is."

After deflecting credit, Swartz is a little more emotional when asked what it means to achieve the feat at Mogadore — the school where he not only has had his greatest success as a coach, but the place where he himself starred in high school.

"It's just special," Swartz said. "I don't think words can describe it."

Russ Swartz, Mogadore build a powerhouse

Swartz and the Wildcats has been a heck of a marriage.

Together, they've gone on some remarkable runs, winning eight of the last 10 Portage Trail Conference titles, not to mention a run to the Canton Fieldhouse back in 2019.

That's not to say success came right away when Swartz took over at Mogadore back in 2008-2009, just a couple of years removed from a winless season.

"Where do I start?" said Wildcats athletic director Stephen Lutz, who spent many years as Swartz's assistant. "I do remember that first week of practice, maybe not every minute of it, but I do recall some moments when we were wondering what we had gotten ourselves into because they were really, I mean in terms of what he wanted to get accomplished, way far behind."

Swartz's strength revealed itself in that moment.

His strength was his refusal to compromise on the style of basketball that he knew worked — the style that he had developed over his prior stops at Norton and Southeast.

"The biggest thing that I saw was that just he continued to do his system," Lutz said. "He started from day one with the drills and the different things. They just kept building on it, building on it and he never wavered from that. He tweaked it for the talent that he had year to year, but he never shied away from the system that he had brought to Mogadore, that he and his brother Rod had been working on for years."

The system that the Swartz brothers developed has no shortage of influences and no shortage of tenets. A few basic foundation blocks: motion offense, a willingness to shoot the 3-pointer, a fast-paced offense when possible and feisty man-to-man defense.

"Mogadore being a smaller school, we don't always have the Division I athletes or whatnot so you know your team concept has to be intact," said Rod Swartz, Russ' brother and longtime assistant, not to mention Wildcats star and onetime Panthers head coach. "Your system has to be intact in order to win a lot of games, and that's what we harp on."

The most important building block, per Russ Swartz, is even simpler than man-to-man defense or a knack for deep shots.

"It revolves around unselfish team play more so than anything else," Swartz said. "I think we're hard to guard as a team. Even when we've had great individual players, our individual players have bought into the system."

A gentle touch amid the fire

Russ Swartz's style is unique, there's no question about it.

Particularly in today's game.

Swartz is an old-school coach. He freely admits that he is very demanding on his players, with his sideline fire frequently drawing looks from the opposing fans.

"You couldn't ask for a more demanding coach," Lutz said. "I was with him. I was cut from the same mold, so we're old school all the way. That's how we were brought up. That's how our parents were so that's how we were going to be. That's just the way it is."

As Lutz noted, Swartz grew up around the hard-nosed coaching of his father, Larry. Long before he was a grad assistant for Bob Huggins and picked up plenty of tricks of the trade from the legendary college basketball coach, he learned from Larry Swartz.

"He was demanding," Russ Swartz said. "If we had a ball in our hand, he was demanding of us doing things the right way. If we were going to go out and practice and do the things that we were doing, he was demanding enough to force us to do it the correct way. We weren't going out there [to] mess around and not get anything out of it. That's what he instilled."

That style has worked beautifully for the Wildcats.

Part of that is a community willing to embrace hard coaching. Part of that is Swartz's own ability to mesh hard coaching with a soft touch behind the scenes.

"He loves to coach, he loves the kids, he likes being around them, he likes communicating with them and I think that, among some of his other qualities, has got to be the best attributes," Lutz said. "Because he does truly love these kids. You see it every day at school and after games and in the locker room and things like that. You just don't always see it during games."

Swartz continues to love his student-athletes and the job itself.

After three-and-a-half decades leading high school programs, Swartz hasn't showed any signs of being done.

"When I start to dislike the summer and practices during the regular season, that's when I know it's time to step away," Swartz said. "Because I think I'm one of those people that will never lose the passion on game night, but if you don't have the passion for the offseason and daily grind of practice over the four-month period, then it's time to step away and fortunately right now I still have that passion to do those things."

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Mogadore High School basketball coach Russ Swartz gets 500th win