By Nathan Cooper, AlbertLeaTribune.com

NORTHWOOD, Iowa &8212; Daryl Love took charge of a girls&8217; basketball program with a tradition six seasons ago.

Except it was the type of tradition in dire need of a turnaround.

&8220;I&8217;ve been fighting an uphill battle,&8221; said Love, who led the Vikings to the most successful season in school history this season at 10-12. &8220;It&8217;s kind of like banging your head against a wall.&8221;

And he&8217;s not exaggerating.

Love took lead vocals on a team that hadn&8217;t fared better than 9-13 since Iowa switched to 5-on-5 girls&8217; basketball for the 1993-94 season. Until fall of 1993, Iowa employed 6-on-6 system for high-school girls&8217; games.

In his first season in 2002-03, the Vikings won a game. In his second season, the Vikings another game. For the next two seasons, the Vikings went winless. After four years at the helm, Love was the owner of a record that included two wins and 84 losses.

It wasn&8217;t difficult to figure out the reason the record looked like it did.

&8220;There&8217;s been kind of a tradition here that in girls&8217; sports kids were out for more of the social aspect.&8221;

Love has changed many of those sentiments and finally, in his fifth year, the squad showed progress to a 6-17 mark. However, two-thirds of the point production from that team graduated last season. It seemed possible for the Vikings to slip back into familiar territory.

But they didn&8217;t. And leader of the team&8217;s achievement is the Tribune&8217;s Girls&8217; Basketball Coach of the Year for 2007-08. It&8217;s the first time a Northwood-Kensett girls&8217; basketball coach has taken the honor since the Tribune started selecting a coach of the year in 1992.

The biggest evidence of progress may have been showcased at the end of the season, says Love.

&8220;A lot of times we&8217;d get to tournament time, and it&8217;s almost like a sigh of relief that the season&8217;s over,&8221; he said. &8220;This year we had a lot of tears in the locker room. I thought it was a good sign. They were disappointed and you knew they weren&8217;t happy with that.&8221;

Love said it well help with next year&8217;s goal-setting.

A new fixture of the program is a speed, agility and quickness repitoire implemented in large part to third-year assistant coach and Love&8217;s right-hand man, Steve Hartman. It&8217;s a plan that more girls are buying into. It seems to be an investment that&8217;s paying off in wins.

Northwood-Kensett ran the table in its five non-conference matchups, defeating three North Iowa Conference teams (of which the Vikings used to be a member) and Glenville-Emmons, the first time the schools matched up on the hardwood in and interstate battle.

In the Corn Bowl Conference, the Vikings had the third-smallest enrollment of the nine schools. Next season, with two schools consolidating, Northwood-Kensett and Riceville will be the only 1A schools in an eight-team conference. The rest will be classified 2A.

After making light of that fact, without hesitation, &8220;bring &8217;em on&8221; were the next words he uttered.

There are reasons he&8217;s as confident. The Vikings lose less than 10 points per game in production to graduation. The Tribune&8217;s player of the year, Northwood-Kensett&8217;s Kate Hartman, is a sophomore.

The Vikings have had more success at the junior high level. For the two years in a row, the seventh-grade coach hasn&8217;t lost a game. This year&8217;s eighth-graders didn&8217;t lose a game last season, and without one of their top players did almost as well this year.

Love, a four-sport athlete at Meservey-Thornton High School in Iowa, is the director of buildings and grounds at Northwood-Kensett and has worked for the school since 1982, but he was linked to Northwood as a child.

&8220;I spent every summer up here with my grandparents &8212; as much time as I could. I always said this is where I was going to go live someday.&8221;

A Northwood resident since 1982, Love has carved out a niche in the school system. He&8217;s also an assistant for the football team, a squad that has historically expected wins each week.

In part because the of the football team&8217;s winning ways and the boys&8217; basketball team&8217;s recent surge &8212; a state third-place finish in 2006 followed by a Class 1A state title last season &8212; the girls&8217; teams haven&8217;t gotten overwhelming community support. It&8217;s another aspect of Northwood-Kensett that&8217;s beginning to change for the better.

&8220;Girls&8217; sports here haven&8217;t been followed very well,&8221; Love said. &8220;Girls&8217; programs haven&8217;t had a great deal of support other than the parents. You expected the crowd to come walking in because they know the boys&8217; game starts about eight.&8221;

Love also talked with his team about putting a product on the floor that people would want to watch. In his first years, Love&8217;s teams typically used a slow-down offense and a zone defense in an attempt to keep scores close. This season, the Vikings developed their own style. It was more up-tempo with a press and more man defense.

&8220;I think the girls had more fun playing that way,&8221; he said. &8220;And we&8217;ve seen bigger crowds all the time. They were really following our record and they knew we had a shot.&8221;

Most importantly, the team knew it had a shot.