Norwin set to hire veteran West Mifflin coach for boys basketball post

By: Bill Beckner Jr.
Friday, August 6, 2021 | 3:41 PM

Norwin will recommend longtime West Mifflin coach Lance Maha to take over its boys basketball program.

Maha, 54, was the girls coach at West Mifflin — his alma mater — last year after coaching the Titans boys team for 20 years.

If approved at Monday night’s board meeting, he will replace Buddy Valinsky, who resigned at Norwin after two seasons.

Maha, who has more than 300 wins and guided West Mifflin’s boys to the PIAA finals in 2002, coached a season at Propel Braddock Hills before taking over the West Mifflin girls team.

He resigned from the boys job in 2017-18 for personal reasons before returning to the WPIAL. Maha, a social studies teacher at West Mifflin, also applied the last time the Norwin job opened.

A coach known for employing disciplined defense and sometimes a push-the-pace style, Maha’s teams made the playoffs 17 times in his 20 seasons at West Mifflin, where he had 289 wins and 201 losses with six section titles.

Maha also coached at Quigley Catholic — when he was 22 — and has an overall high school boys record of 318-264.

He was 7-3 with the West Mifflin girls last year.

Also early in his career, he had college assistant jobs at Pitt-Johnstown and Robert Morris and was the head coach at Penn State New Kensington for one year.

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

Tags: Norwin