MONTOUR'S MITCH MOVING ON

Montour Featured Stories

MONTOUR'S MITCH MOVING ON

BY DOUG HUGHEY

Recently retired Montour Athletic Director Mitch Galiyas can list off numerous highlights from his 38-year career in athletics, much of it spent at Montour building the program into a AAA force.

Bringing the nationally televised ESPN reality show "Bound for Glory" there is one. Coaching the boys’ varsity volleyball team to three section titles and a WPIAL title is another. He can also list hiring two coaches who have made the football and basketball teams perennial WPIAL contenders, and brokering sponsorship deals saving the school and taxpayers over a million dollars.

One of Mitch’s fondest accomplishments, though, actually comes from another school, Quigley Catholic, where in 1986 he took over the single-A football squad. During the first half of his tenure at Montour, Mitch coached a number of teams at other schools, including Quigley, which at that time hadn’t won a game in three seasons. With Mitch at the helm, they won their first game that year.

"They had a sign out front that said, ‘We’re rich, we got Mitch’," he says.

He was reminded of that victory when he went to sign up for Social Security, and the sales representative mentioned it. She was a Quigley grad, and a former member of the marching band.

Before Mitch coached at Quigley, though, his career started at the same school where it has since ended, as a history teacher and the freshman football coach. It was his first job out of college. After coaching at Quigley, he coached at West Allegheny for a year under coach Joe Frangione, and then at Baldwin under Don Yanessa. At Carlynton, he was head football coach for the 1991 and 1992 seasons.

All the while, though, he continued to teach at Montour, where he also coached the men’s volleyball team to a lifetime 351-169 record, and a WPIAL title in 1987. Among the players on that 1987 team was Chris Hale, who went on to play volleyball at the Naval Academy.

"He brought that same football fire to volleyball," says Chris about Mitch. "He was fiery, passionate, and inspirational."

It was Mitch who introduced him to his coach at the Naval Academy, says Chris, who later served in the military, and now heads Victory Media, a Coraopolis-based company publishing four national military publications.

Mitch Galiyas

Montour alum Sam Woods played under Mike Marchionda, a member of Mitch’s 1987 WPIAL-winning team, and under Mike went on to earn Montour another WPIAL title in 2000. Now the head volleyball coach at Moon, Sam says that when his grades started to slip, it was Mitch who sat him down to talk to him, and later got him a job after college.

"He always wanted the best for the people he cared about," says Sam about Mitch.

In 1995, Mitch was named athletic director at Montour, after two years of serving as an assistant to the position. He describes it as the type of job where he learned to "think outside the box," and make moves like one in 1998 when he secured a new track in exchange for allowing a company to install a 3-way billboard on campus. The billboard was never installed, but the school still got its track, which Mitch says would have otherwise cost about $140,000.

There was also the $75,000 in weight equipment he secured through a grant from "Body by Jake" for the middle school, and a deal he brokered with Allegheny General Hospital to supply the school with athletic trainers.

Most notable, though, may have been the ESPN reality series, which operated on the premise of installing former NFL player Dick Butkus as head coach to turn around a high school football program that hadn’t reached the playoffs in five years. Through the show, the school brokered a deal with Dicks for amenities from lockers to projectors, and another with Reebok for new equipment. Yet another through Energizer got the school a new scoreboard and play clocks.

"We were the first in the area to get them," says Mitch about the play clocks, noting that at first some officials were reluctant to use them.

At Montour, the "Bound for Glory" idea was met with plenty of enthusiasm by the community, complete with tailgating and packed bleachers. That was another payoff, says Mitch.

"The ESPN producers were confused when they got the tape," he says. "They were like, ‘we thought this was a dying program’."

Montour secured just one win that season, but three years later competed at Heinz Field for a WPIAL title. Mitch points out that since 2007, the team has made 3 WPIAL title appearances under coach Lou Cerro, who Mitch hired to take over in 2006. Lou was named the AAA football coach of the year, while men’s basketball coach Adam Kaufmann was named the AAA basketball coach of the year by the Pennsylvania Coach’s Association.

"I don’t believe that’s ever been done before in the state of Pennsylvania," says Mitch.

Since coming back to coach at his alma mater, Adam has coached the Montour basketball team to three WPIAL appearances, two titles, and two state finals. Mitch says that when he hired Adam in 2007, some questioned his experience, but Mitch says Adam’s enthusiasm and character convinced him he was the right choice.

As he heads into retirement, Mitch says he is looking forward to volunteering with his church, St. Malachy, and the Knights of Columbus, as well as the Pittsburgh Basketball Club. After serving as a Kennedy zoning officer for 15 years, and on the parks board for 10, he was recently named interim commissioner, and is running for the position this coming election.

He’s also looking forward to spending time with his grandsons and his wife, Mary Jo, and volunteering at Montour.

"They’ve been good to me," he says, "and I’d like to give back."