One down, one to go.
Bishop Canevin High School has announced the hiring of Rod Steele as the school’s new head football coach, replacing Richard Johnson, who resigned last month after five seasons at the helm.
Steele’s hiring filled one of two vacancies on the school’s athletic staff, as head basketball coach Aaron McGee stepped down earlier this week after a little more than one season on the job.
Dale Checketts, Bishop Canevin’s athletic director and interim principal, said having two high-profile coaching vacancies at the same time “is part of high school athletics today.”
“Coaches will make changes based on family and different personal things, and it’s completely understandable,” he said. “We’re all trying to find that right balance.
“These two openings came at a similar time, but that’s just part of the high school athletic environment that we’re in.”
Steele becomes the Crusaders’ eighth football coach and arrives after spending the previous six seasons at West Mifflin. He retired from that position in February, but when Bishop Canevin reached out, Steele opted to get back in the game.
Prior to coaching at West Mifflin, Steele ran the show at Steel Valley, guiding the Ironmen to a pair of WPIAL championships during his nine-year run. Steele’s 2016 WPIAL championship team finished with a 15-0 record and also won the PIAA Class AA title.
Steele, who also spent time as an assistant at Central Catholic during his 28-year coaching career, said he was honored to have the opportunity to coach at Bishop Canevin and hopes to build on the foundation that Johnson created.
“Rich did a good job with his program and the (student-athletes) he brought in,” he said. “We just want to continue on with that success and put a little twist on some of the things regarding our culture and how we want our kids to go about doing things.
“First and foremost, we want them to be respectful young men, and we want to give them the skill set to go and become successful young adults due to what they learned through our coaches and our program.”
Checketts said Steele stood out to the school’s hiring committee – and not just for what his teams have done on the field over the years.
“He’s made a commitment to our school community and presented a program that will be much bigger than football,” he said, referring to things like incorporating community service work and team Masses into the program.
“He’s interested in building young men and giving them an opportunity to grow not only as football players but as student-athletes and in continuing their faith journeys.”
He also said Steele’s prior experience as a head coach at the high school level will allow him to assemble a staff in relatively short order, and that should keep the Crusaders’ program from “falling behind” as the spring turns to summer.
Steele said the team’s offseason conditioning program will start Monday.
“We’re already a little behind some other programs,” he said. “But we’ll do our best to come in and get to know the kids, and the kids to know us, and we’ll build that family culture and go from there.”
Checketts said he was thankful for the work Johnson did in his five seasons. “He did a great job of revitalizing the program,” he said.
Steele’s 2016 team became the first in PIAA history to win every game by the mercy rule since its inception in 1998. MaxPreps chose that Ironmen squad as the small school national champion.
Johnson said he was grateful that Bishop Canevin gave him a chance to coach at the high school level, as he had never done so before arriving at the school in February 2020. His only coaching experience prior to that was at the middle school and youth league levels.
Johnson said he had written letters to several high school programs offering to volunteer, and never even received a response. But Bishop Canevin chose Johnson from a pool of 15 candidates in February 2020, saying his vision for the program – a vision that included building a family culture – set him apart from the others.
Johnson said several factors led to his decision to resign last month but he would not get into specifics.
“We just came together and decided that maybe it was for the best,” he said.
Johnson was hired just weeks before COVID-19 exploded on the scene, but that didn’t seem to hinder him. He took over a program that had gone 1-9 the year before he was hired and after going 5-3 the first year, he led the Crusaders to a WPIAL championship in 2021, beating Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. The Crusaders’ season ended with an overall record of 13-2 and a loss in the PIAA semifinals. In 2022, his team lost to Union in the WPIAL finals. In five seasons, his teams compiled an overall mark of 49-12, including 26-6 in section play.
Last year’s team went 9-3 and reached the semifinals of the Class 1A playoffs before losing to Clairton.
“I had a really good time (at Bishop Canevin),” he said. “We were able to do a lot of good things there. There are a lot of good kids in the school, and we feel like we gave the program a stronger heartbeat.
“Bishop Canevin took a chance on me. They gave me a shot.”
Johnson said there was no magic ingredient that went into building a winning program at Bishop Canevin.
“When I came in, we had to change the kids’ perspective on things,” he said. “We focused on hard work, discipline and grades.”
Johnson said he believed if he could get his players to focus on academics and discipline by giving them a schedule and keeping them as busy as possible, they would achieve success both on the field and in the classroom.
“And it worked,” he said.
Johnson said he didn’t get a chance to address his team as a group regarding his decision to resign, but did speak to a couple of players privately.
“A lot of them were disappointed,” he said. “But I was kind of a hard coach, so some of the kids were probably happy. If you’re hard on your team and want certain things for them, some people are happy to see you leave.”
Johnson, who just turned 40, said he might do some volunteer coaching this season, and he hopes to get a chance to watch his older son – a sophomore at Bethel Park – play some football.
One thing is for certain.
“I’m going to do a lot of fishing,” he said. “I haven’t been fishing for four years because our summers have been so busy (at Bishop Canevin).
“That rod’s going in the water.”
Be First to Comment