Mt. Lebanon coach traveled long road to reach milestone
Eleanor Bailey/The Almanac
Joe David celebrates with his players after winning his first WPIAL championship as Mt. Lebanon boys’ head basketball coach in 2006. David also coached the Blue Devils to a district title in 2010 and to the PIAA finals in 2011. He recorded his 300th career win on Dec. 13 when the Blue Devils defeated Peters Township.
Eleanor Bailey/The Almanac
Joe David has guided Mt. Lebanon to two WPIAL championships as well as one PIAA runner-up trophy during his 17-year tenure as boys’ basketball coach.
He recorded his 300th coaching victory on Jan. 13 when the Blue Devils defeated Peters Township.
Joe David celebrated two milestones last week. On Jan. 17, he turned 54. On Jan. 13, he recorded his 300th career win as Mt. Lebanon boys’ basketball coach. Neither event defines him.
“On my tombstone, I don’t think it’s going to have my record,” David said.
His epitaph, however, may read exemplary.
“Joe is a terrific coach,” emphasized Mt. Lebanon athletic director John Grogan, “but in my mind, he’s a better person. He’s a hard worker but a really good person, dedicated to his family, business, community and our basketball program. He’s a competitive person but a caring one, as well. I am proud that he is a representative of our program, school district and community.”
David is a fine representative of the region he once called home, too. After eighth grade, he moved from Terre Haute, Ind., to Upper St. Clair. Enrolled in high school, he immediately impressed his freshman biology teacher, Ed Callahan, so much that he awarded him a D on his first exam.
“I’ve had a lot of wonderful teachers in my life but Mr. Callahan was the most significant,” David said. “He only knew me as a student but he said if you work, you can get an A. He was the first person, when I was down, he believed in me.”
Like many of his current charges, David started out in life excelling on the basketball court. By his junior year, he had picked up the first of 30 scholarship offers. In the classic form letter, with his name inserted after the salutation, coach Rudy Marisa wrote how Waynesburg would love for him to attend the school.
Excited about his first offer, David verbally proclaimed he was going to the college. “I was going to be a Yellow Jacket,” he enthused.
Fate intervened. The ACC, Pac-12, Big 10 and SEC came calling. He visited Ohio State, Stanford, Georgia Tech and Washington. Even Penn State University flew him out to see the Hershey Medical Center, because at age 17, David aspired to be a doctor.
The University of Pittsburgh, however, was not on his radar.
David reasoned, why would he want to play in the Eastern Eight when he could play at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, the Hoosiers’ Assembly Hall or UNC’s Dean Dome? But then the Panthers joined the Big East. Who wouldn’t want to play at Madison Square Garden?
After lettering four years and earning a bachelor of science degree in behavioral neuroscience in 1986, his beloved alma mater declined to accept the cum laude honors student into its medical school. David, however, bounced back. He earned a master’s degree from Pitt and then his doctorate in physical therapy from Temple University.
For 24 years, he has owned and operated his successful practice, David Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine Center on Castle Shannon Boulevard.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” David said of the disappointment of not being accepted to medical school.
It’s one of those life lessons he now espouses to his players. He preaches to them in practice when you get knocked down, you get back up. “You never quit,” he said. “You work hard.”
For 17 seasons, he has worked hard to revitalize the boys’ basketball program at Mt. Lebanon. Heading into this week’s action, he owned a 302-141 record that has featured four trips to the WPIAL finals and one journey to the PIAA championships.
David was an instant success for his first game also proved to be his first victory as the Blue Devils traveled to Altoona and defeated the Mountain Lions in their tip-off tournament in 2001. During that first season, David compiled a 20-10 record that featured an appearance in the WPIAL’s Final Four and a quarterfinal showing in the state playoffs.
David remembers that squad and season well. Brad Russell, Chris Pinch, Max Jones, Chris Mikita and Travis Bluemling were his top six players. Using only five players, Blue Devils knocked off USC, which was then ranked No. 3, in a WPIAL playoff game at Chartiers Valley, where his father, Sam, used to coach.
Those first successes were significant to David.
“It was important to me because it showed me I could do this,” said the son of Janet David. “You want to show that you belong and that you can do the job and do it well. Obviously basketball was in my blood but as a coach you are entrusted with honing the skills of kids who are 15, 16 and 17.”
According to Grogan, molding his players into young men is one of the things David does best.
“Joe does a tremendous job year in and year out and our teams are always competitive but what he’s really done a tremendous job at is building relationships,” Grogan said. “He’s teaching life lessons that our young men take beyond sports and the basketball court. That’s most important.”
Indeed, that’s near and dear to David’s heart. He admitted he loves coaching because it enables him to stay around the game he loves, but he also said he does it because it’s an opportunity to be around young adults, grab their attention and “teach” them life lessons. When his former players return, he sees and hears the impact his advice has had.
“They really do continue to carry the lessons through life with them. I know because when they come back and I hear them talk they say those things are on their mind and they are talking about the things we talked about back then with their children. You don’t know it clicks until you are raising your own children.”
David and his wife, Sandi, have raised four children.
Jeremy works with his father as a physical therapist, while Justin is attending physical therapy school at Pitt, after his playing career at Southern Florida.
Johnny is a junior at the University of Kentucky. He was just awarded a full scholarship on the school’s basketball team, where he has played since a freshman.
Samantha is a senior and the last link to Mt. Lebanon High School athletics. She is a dancer with Thomas Studio and for the Blue Devil dance team. Planning to go into the medical field, perhaps as a physician’s assistant, Samantha hopes to compete on a dance team in college. OSU, Pitt, Michigan and Kentucky are among her college choices.
One of the most satisfying and rewarding times in David’s career has been coaching his sons Justin and Jonathan. “It wasn’t about the wins and losses. It was being able to be with them every day. Sharing the highs and lows together,” he said.
“A great deal of being able to do that has been my supportive wife,” said David of the woman he met at Pitt. “She never questions me and let’s me do what I do in life. She has played a big role in all of this. She’s sat down and watched games, learned a lot about basketball and got to know all the players.”
David remembers well the championship players.
His first district title team in 2006 featured Andrew Devlin, a standout football player who attended the University of Virginia then Pitt; Adam Potter, who joined the priesthood and is now the pastor at St. Benedict The Abbott in Peters Township; and Evan Stocker, Nate Gannon, Shane Phillips and Ryan Lang.
“That was a special group. Fantastic young men,” he said.
David noted how that team reached the district final the season before, falling to Sean Lee’s USC Panthers. It was special for the district as Mt. Lebanon had not won a WPIAL title since Dick Black’s first season at the helm in 1961.
“It takes the pressure off when you win one and it’s nice to be able to get there four more times and pick up a few more along the way.”
David picked up his second WPIAL title in 2010, also a year after falling in the finals to Peters Township. With the same nucleus of players, David scored his 200th victory, reached the Final Four in the WPIAL and claimed the PIAA runner-up trophy, falling in overtime in the PIAA championships.
George Hensler, Evan Eaton, Tyler Roth, Paul Lang and Luke Hagy were the starters on the 2011 club. Hagy, a record-breaker on the Cornell football team, and Lang, a standout at Michigan State and a former Pittsburgh Steelers free agent, joined Deion Turman, Evan Pierce and Grant Latus in starting for the 2010 team that defeated Gateway in the WPIAL final.
“It’s not about wins. You don’t aspire to make this your goal,” David said of the 300th victory. “It’s about the players and the relationships you develop. I’ve been fortunate because of them, but their success is a testament to their parents. I didn’t create them as good as they are. Their parents did that. I just inherited them. I am so thankful to have been part of their lives. You can’t measure definitively how influential you have been. All you can hope for is that you added something positive to their experience.”