Building trust key to rebuilding Monessen football

By: Mike Kovak
Saturday, August 21, 2021 | 6:40 PM

Purchase Photo Options

It was a fair question, albeit a brutally honest one.

When coach Wade Davis met with what was left of the Monessen football team for the first time in mid-January, this was the first question he fielded:

“Coach, are you going to be here for one year and leave?”

After all, it happened at Monessen last year when Shane Swope took the job despite preseason doubts about whether Monessen would field a team. The Greyhounds did but struggled with injuries, academic issues and other distractions. Monessen went 0-7, forfeiting its final three games. Swope left, and the school was searching for another coach to try to resurrect one of the WPIAL’s most tradition-rich programs.

Mikey Blainefield, a Monessen grad who played at Georgetown, lasted three years before that, getting Monessen back to the WPIAL Class A playoffs with a 7-3 record in 2018 but not topping four wins in any other season. Joe Salvino, a PIAA and WPIAL title-winning basketball coach at Monessen who has revived the program at Belle Vernon, lasted two seasons before Blainefield.

It’s been a hard, almost unimaginable fall for a program with 668 wins, a pair of titles (1930, ’61) in the WPIAL’s largest classification at the time and a lengthy list of Division I players such as former Big East Co-Defensive Player of the Year Mick Williams (Pitt) and NFL alumni Jo Jo Heath, Bill Malinchak, Doug Crusan and Eric Crabtree, among others.

Once considered the yearly favorite to win the Tri-County South Conference, Monessen no longer holds such status. Taking steps toward a return is up to a roster of 21 players, and they’ve put their collective faith in Davis, a longtime assistant coach and former semi-pro player who served as the offensive and defensive lines coach at West Mifflin.

“Coach keeps us on task,” sophomore Jamar Bethea said. “We’re not going to have any more issues with attitude, no more forfeits, stuff like that.”

When Brown first was hired, his primary job was as a recruiter. The Duquesne native met with school officials and walked the halls in search of players, but he was far from desperate when it came to filling the roster.

“There were kids who weren’t sure if they wanted to be part of this,” Brown said. “I let those guys alone. I only want kids who want to be here.”

Still, part of the preseason routine for Monessen, which opens its season Friday at perennial Class 2A contender Washington, is convincing the players in place that the coaching staff is willing to stay through a potentially long rebuild.

“The players are starting to trust and believe in us,” Brown said. “When we first got here, there was trepidation. I understand that. They’ve been through a lot, but I tell the kids that we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going to be here for just one year and leave. We want to see this thing through.”

Players such as Bethea, a potential big-play running back, and junior offensive lineman Jai’Sean Blackman were not born in Monessen. Bethea originally attended Ringgold, and Blackman is from Pittsburgh, but both are aware of what winning football means to the community.

“We talk about it a lot,” Blackman said. “It would mean so much to us to turn this around, even though I’m not from here. I know what it’s like, and I’ve heard about what Monessen football was like. Things already are a lot different from last year.”

Tags: Monessen