Some high school football players go on to make good coaches. Some excellent players also have been lousy coaches.
But the Post-Gazette Coach of the Year never played a down of football.
Mike Zmijanac's playing days many years ago at Aliquippa High School consisted of some flag football, but never organized football.
No matter. With no playing experience, Zmijanac began his football coaching career in 1972 as an assistant coach at Aliquippa's junior high. Now, winning is elementary to this non-player.
Calling Zmijanac one of the greatest coaches in WPIAL history would not be an overstatement. He is a retired creative-writing teacher, and this season the silver-haired fox authored a compelling chapter to his 19 storybook years as coach. Aliquippa had a new quarterback and virtually all new offensive and defensive lines. A few days before the season, he learned one of his top running backs [DiMantae Bronaugh] couldn't play because of leukemia.
But Zmijanac molded the Quips together and guided Aliquippa to the WPIAL Class AA championship for the sixth time in his career. He became one of only seven coaches in WPIAL history to win six titles. The Quips finished 15-1, losing in the PIAA final to Southern Columbia.
After the loss to Southern Columbia, Zmijanac was a little emotional, which is unusual for him.
"I don't know why I was emotional," he said. "Maybe a couple things. I didn't know if I'd ever get back there [to the state championship]. I'm telling you it's harder to get there than it is to win it. Also, I don't know if I ever thought this team would accomplish what they did.
"We had a new quarterback, whole new offensive and defensive lines, new players in the secondary and then we had Bronaugh's illness. We got very fortunate that [running back] Kaezon Pugh was so durable. I looked at it as a struggle from the beginning. But the coaching staff and all of us together made it a pretty good football team."
Aliquippa has been more than "pretty good" under Zmijanac. He has taken Aliquippa to the WPIAL Class AA championship game a record eight consecutive years. It's a remarkable feat for a school whose enrollment is small enough that the Quips are a Class A team that chooses to play up in Class AA.
Zmijanac, 72, began his high school coaching career as an assistant for Don Yannessa in 1977. He eventually became Yannessa's defensive coordinator and held the same job for almost a decade with Yannessa at Baldwin. Zmijanac became Aliquippa's head coach in 1997, won 200 games faster than any coach in WPIAL history and has a 225-32 record (.875 winning percentage). He is 80-6 the past six seasons and don't forget he also won one PIAA and three WPIAL championships in seven years as Aliquippa's boys basketball coach. He is the only coach to have state championships in basketball and football.
And he plans on coming back for at least one more year of coaching football. Zmijanac, who also is Aliquippa's athletic director, had lost in the WPIAL title game to South Fayette in 2013 and 2014.
"It was a rewarding year because I think what it did was it validated our program in a way," said Zmijanac. "It validated our way of doing things and it certainly validated it after losing tons of really good players the past couple years."
Previous Coach of the Year honorees:
2003 -- Chuck Wagner, Springdale
2004 -- Art Walker, Central Catholic
2005 -- Greg Botta, Franklin Regional
2006 -- Jim Render, Upper St. Clair
2007 -- Bill Cherpak, Thomas Jefferson
2008 -- Jeff Metheny, Bethel Park
2009 -- George Novak, Woodland Hills
2010 -- Mark Lyons, Central Valley
2011 -- Tom Nola, Clairton
2012 -- Bob Palko, West Allegheny
2013 -- Joe Rossi, South Fayette
2014 -- Eric Kasperowicz, Pine-Richland
2015 -- Mike Zmijanac, Aliquippa
First Published: December 24, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
