Lure of arena football expansion team pulls coach Shawn Liotta away from Burrell job

By: Dave Mackall
Monday, December 2, 2024 | 12:01 AM

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One by one, the coaching jobs appear. Most times, Shawn Liotta answers the call.

The Springdale native is on the move again, this time back to the professional ranks as coach of the expansion Wilkes-Barre franchise of the newly formed Arena Football One indoor league.

He leaves Burrell High School after a seven-year run as coach of the Buccaneers, where his teams’ combined record was a mere 26-45 (.366) with just two winning seasons but three trips to the WPIAL playoffs.

With new enrollment numbers requiring Burrell to step up to Class 3A from 2A this season, the Bucs finished with a 2-8 overall record, 2-4 in the Allegheny 7 Conference.

His new gig again will require more travel for Liotta, whose 25-year coaching career includes roughly half the time at the professional indoor league level.

“It’s an opportunity I couldn’t pass up,” said Liotta, 44, who lives in Lower Burrell with his wife, Allison, and daughter, Lily.

He joked that his family won’t mind him being away for part of the time.

“They’ll be happy to get me out of the house again,” he said.

An Arena lifer

Burrell was Liotta’s eighth high school coaching stop and fourth as a head coach.

“Every job I’ve ever gone to has been a challenge,” he said. “I’ve been very fortunate to be part of the arena games for a long time.”

And he’s eager to get back to it.

Liotta spent nine seasons with indoor league teams in Wheeling, W.Va., and Erie, winning two league championships and two coach of the year awards with the Erie Explosion.

“You could say I’ve been an arena football lifer,” he said. “Wilkes-Barre is a great market. They had great success and attendance before.”

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pioneers of arenafootball2 operated from 2002-09.

The Wilkes-Barre Arena Football One team, yet to select a nickname, will play its home games at 8,050-seat Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes-Barre Township.

“The appointment of Shawn Liotta as head coach signals a promising era for the Wilkes-Barre arena football team,” club owner Matt Rowland said in a statement. “With his wealth of experience and strategic mindset, the team is poised for a successful future, and fans can look forward to an exciting season ahead.”

Liotta, known for his fast-paced, no-huddle offensive schemes, seems to thrive in the indoor game. But with a certification in drug and alcohol counseling, his passion for mentoring others lends itself to high school-aged players.

“People ask me, ‘Why do you take so many different jobs?’ ” he said. “Hey, listen, every kid needs coached. What if every coach said, ‘I’m not taking that job. They can’t win?’ ”

Way back when

It began in 1999 at Springdale High School, his alma mater, where Liotta played for legendary coach Chuck Wagner. He was 18 and fresh out of high school when he took a job as an assistant with the Dynamos.

Following a three-year stint, Liotta became running backs coach at Duquesne for two seasons before accepting his first head coaching at 23, taking over at PIAA District 4 Line Mountain.

But he soon returned to Western Pennsylvania and spent three years as coach at then-WPIAL member West Shamokin before the Wolves left to join District 6.

Liotta got his first taste of arena-style football in 2007, taking over as coach of the Erie RiverRats, who began operations in Pittsburgh before moving north.

With the indoor teams playing a spring schedule, Liotta, for much of the time, coached at the high school level in the fall as an assistant at Yough, McKeesport, Saltsburg and Clairton.

He returned to the high school head coaching ranks in 2016, taking over at Albert Gallatin, where he spent two years before assuming the Burrell job in 2018.

“To me, coaching at the high school level is not about winning as much as it is about whether the team with the better players usually wins,” Liotta said. “In Western Pennsylvania, some of the best coaching jobs have been done by guys who have gone 2-8 or 3-7 and coached their butts off. They’ve won games they shouldn’t have.”

He hoped his time at Burrell was not in vain because, he said, his passion for coaching the players was the chief reason he didn’t want to move on.

“I love it here,” he said of the Burrell community.

Liotta sat out the Bucs’ first two games this season on a PIAA suspension after being ejected during a first-round WPIAL Class 2A playoff loss to Mohawk in 2023.

With 11 seconds remaining in the first half, he walked onto the field to protest what he perceived to be Mohawk players targeting his team with racial slurs.

The WPIAL eventually placed the Lawrence County school’s football program on two years’ probation.

“I don’t regret that for one second,” Liotta said.

‘No Huddle, No Mercy’

In 2020, Liotta wrote a 126-page book about installing a no-huddle, run-and-shoot offense.

“I’m a guy that loves to think outside the box, and I’m not afraid to come up with some different ideas and learn and grow from them,” Liotta told TribLive shortly after “No Huddle, No Mercy” was published in February 2020. “That’s basically what this book is. It’s a collection of 22 years of experience in doing this type of stuff.”

The idea came to Liotta during his time as offensive coordinator at Clairton in 2014, when the Bears scored a PIAA-record 958 points and went 15-1, their only loss a 19-18 decision to District 6 Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic in the PIAA Class A championship game.

It is a style suited for indoor football’s fast pace.

“I am super excited about this hire,” said Gary Compton, Arena Football One director of football operations. “Shawn brings a long history of success to AF1. It will be exciting to watch him build the program in Wilkes-Barre as the head coach.”

Tags: Burrell