Hopewell football coach Matt Weiss resigns after 5 seasons

By: Chris Harlan
Tuesday, October 31, 2023 | 12:55 AM

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Hopewell football coach Matt Weiss resigned Monday after five seasons with the Vikings, a program that has struggled significantly for more than a decade.

Weiss went 8-37 as coach.

Hopewell finished this fall with a 1-9 record overall and 0-6 in the Class 3A Western Hills Conference. Weiss, a former Rochester assistant, took the Hopewell job striving to build up a program that hasn’t reached the playoffs since 2012.

The playoff drought is the second-longest active in the WPIAL.

“While the success won’t be shown in the win column, the last five years of work we dedicated to Hopewell Football will be shown in areas most often overlooked,” Weiss said in a letter posted to social media. “I wish the team all the best in the future and I hope that my contributions have helped to make the program a success in the future.”

Hopewell was a WPIAL power about two decades ago. The Vikings won WPIAL and PIAA titles in 2002 with Paul Posluszny as a senior, and again reached the WPIAL finals in 2009 with Rushel Shell.

But since qualifying for the playoffs in 2012, Hopewell has gone 22-80 combined in the past 11 seasons with no postseason berths.

Weiss said he “lived out a true honor in Western Pennsylvania” by being a high school football coach, but was stepping down to spend more time with family.

“As the responsibilities and demands on a head coach continue to increase, at the same time, my kids continue to grow and have more and more to do, which has led to me being absent from their lives,” Weiss said. “So, it is time for me to step away … so that I may be a better father and husband to my family.”

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— Matt Weiss (@coachmattweiss) October 30, 2023

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: Hopewell