At the age of 65, Nansemond-Suffolk Academy head football coach Lew Johnston is in an unusual situation this season: He’s the youngest guy on a coaching staff that ranges up to 79 years old.

“(It’s) very strange,” he said. “I’ve always been the old guy, and now because of some switching around and Mike Newhall leaving, I’m now the youngest, which — yeah, it’s kind of weird.”

Newhall’s departure caused a vacancy at the defensive coordinator position, which has now been filled by Sandy Reveley, who is 69 and has quality credentials in the position at NSA.

Under coach Terry Crigger back in the 1990s and early 2000s, Reveley served as the defensive coordinator when the Saints became state champions.

Jon Troy, 79, was the junior junior-varsity coach at NSA last year. This year he’ll take a varsity slot as the offensive and defensive line coach.

Johnston went outside the school to find the coach for his quarterbacks and defensive backs. Cary Parker, 74, a neighbor and fellow church member, is a former coach for Dinwiddie and Prince George high schools, but he had been out of the game for 12 years.

Johnston asked if Parker would be interested in coaching at NSA. Parker said he would pray about it, and then he talked it over with his wife and came back to Johnston and said, “I’m all in.”

“We’ve got close to 200 years of coaching experience just between the four of us,” Johnston said, a situation he assured is very rare.

But the young Saints should be major beneficiaries of the experience and the relationships with the four men, whom Johnston said he sees as being like the players’ grandfathers.

“These guys wouldn’t have been in the game as long as they have if they didn’t have people skills and knowledge,” Johnston said, noting Parker and Troy have coached on the college level, as well.

The players, he added, are likely to respond well to the guidance they’ll receive.

“They are very respectful of adults, so I don’t see it as an issue at all,” he said. “I see nothing but a win-win situation.”

The elder coaches have received some good-natured joking from other sources, though.

“My wife goes, ‘Don’t you all think you need two ambulances at your games?’” Johnston said. He asked, “What for?” and she said, “Well, one for the players and one for the coaches.”

Though Reveley is still employed as a CPA, Johnston, Parker and Troy are retired, prompting Johnston to recall a 2010 movie starring Bruce Willis and other aging stars, “RED.”

“Retired, Extremely Dangerous — that’s what we are,” Johnston said of his staff.