Jeannette coach entering WPIAL finals: ‘I want to win one for our district’

By: Bill Beckner Jr.
Thursday, February 27, 2025 | 11:01 AM

His voice long gone, Adrian Batts let the moment wash over him after his Jeannette boys basketball team ripped off a 20-point win in the WPIAL Class 2A semifinals Monday at jam-packed Fox Chapel.

This one was special.

“What an amazing effort, lot of grit,” Batts said. “Everything we talked about doing, we did it.”

No. 3 seed Jeannette (22-2) advanced to the WPIAL championship game with a 45-25 win over No. 2 Sewickley Academy and will face No. 8 Union (19-6) at 5 p.m. Friday at Pitt’s Petersen Events Center.

“I am so excited for this group,” Batts said. “We talked about getting to the Pete. You look at the run our football team made. We found a way to do it.”

But what about you, coach?

Batts, the Jayhawks’ 17th-year coach who has been with the program since 2005, has a chance to do something he has not done before: win a WPIAL title has a head coach.

While he never will make it about himself, Batts knows how important winning a title would be to Jeannette and its Steeler Nation-like fanbase.

“Man, I’ve won one as an assistant, lost back-to-back (WPIAL titles) and a state (title) as an assistant and lost one as a head coach,” Batts said. “I want to win one for our district.”

Batts, who also is the school’s athletic director and dean of students, has more than 200 wins. But a title has been elusive.

He was an assistant on the 2008 team that won the only district title at Jeannette in boys basketball and was an assistant at Franklin Regional when the Panthers lost in the WPIAL finals in 1996 and ’97.

Jeannette lost in the 2015 Class A final to Monessen, the Jayhawks’ most recent finals appearance.

“You think about it, what does this (semifinal win) mean if we don’t win it all?” Batts said. “You do put yourself in a different category among coaches if you win (a title).”

Julian Batts, the coach’s son and a former Jeannette star who was the point guard on the ’15 team, is the Jayhawks’ associate head coach.

Other current assistants, Swade Redman and Michael Pompei, also were on the ‘15 team. Ken Errett was an assistant then and scouted for the ‘08 team.

“He wants one bad,” Julian Batts said of his father and a WPIAL championship. “I’ll probably talk to the guys (about 2015). They watched some highlights of the 2008 team to help get them ready.

“It’s been 10 years, wow. That makes me feel old.”

Jeannette junior point guard Kymon’e Brown said winning for Batts is just as big as winning for the Glass City.

“It would mean everything,” he said. “For coach Batts, it would be a great achievement for him to get his first WPIAL championship as a head coach. He deserves it, and all season he kept saying, we are playing for something.

“Everyone on our team’s expectation is to win a title after everything that went on in the past five years. This would be very special for him, especially with us getting counted out all year.”

Bill Beckner Jr. is a TribLive reporter covering local sports in Westmoreland County. He can be reached at bbeckner@triblive.com.

Tags: Jeannette