'That's our coach': Former players, coaches remember Beaver's Pat Tarquinio

BEAVER — As a youngster growing up in McKees Rocks, Pat Tarquinio already knew he wanted to be a football coach.

His mother Yolanda once told the story about her son’s ambition to coach football.

“That was his dream as a little boy,” she told the Beaver County Times in 1973. “He’d always say, ‘I want to be a football coach.’

“I’d say, ‘Geez Pat, don’t you think you’d like to do something better?’

“And he’d say, ‘No, that’s what I want to do.’

“I could see he was enthused about it, so I decided to just let him do what he wanted to do.”

As it turned out, Tarquinio’s dream became reality.

After a stellar high school career at Stowe and then at Juniata College where he was a record-setting quarterback, Tarquinio embarked on a coaching career that would make him a western Pennsylvania legend.

Tarquinio, who died Monday at the age of 89, coached on the high school level for 66 years, including 41 years as a head coach.

In 2000 when he ended a 34-year run at Beaver, he was the winningest coach in WPIAL history. To this day, he’s still seventh on the WPIAL all-time win list.

Perhaps just as impressive as his victories was the way Tarquinio went about his business. He was a class act, a humble man who was respected and beloved as any coach in Beaver County history.

“He was such a great guy,” said John Skorupan, a 1969 Beaver grad who went to play linebacker in the NFL for 10 seasons. “I respected the hell out of him.”

“In my entire life, I have never heard a bad word about him, not even close to a bad word,” said Jerald Ingram, a 1979 Beaver graduate who spent 18 seasons in the NFL as a running backs coach.

“Coach truly believed in being a good teacher of the game, on and off the field. That’s our coach. That’s my coach. I’ve always felt that way all my life. And I always will.”

“It was a blessing to have known him,” said Doug Dragan, a fullback/linebacker on Beaver’s 1981 and 1982 WPIAL championship teams. “Of course, it was sad when I heard that Coach passed away, but I know his legacy will always live on, especially with our high school field being named after him, which is really cool.”

After graduating from Stowe High School in 1951, Tarquinio went to the University of Pittsburgh on a football scholarship. But after his freshman year, he transferred to Juniata where he became a small-college star.

He quarterbacked Juniata to three straight unbeaten seasons while setting team passing, rushing and scoring records. As a senior when he was named to the Little All-American team, he led Juniata to the Tangerine Bowl where the Eagles tied Missouri Valley, 6-6.

After graduating from Juniata, Tarquinio landed a job as a teacher and assistant football coach at Ellwood City. His head coach was a former Juniata teammate, Chuck Knox, who would go on to become an NFL head coach with the Buffalo Bills, Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks.

Three years later when Knox left for an assistant coaching job at Wake Forest University, Ellwood City promoted Tarquinio to head coach. In the seven years he coached the Wolverines, his teams compiled an overall record of 28-42.

Then in June of 1966, he began a 34-year run at Beaver.

“The decision to come to Beaver was a tough one to make since I have been coaching at Ellwood City for the last 10 years,” Tarquinio told the Beaver County Times. “But the (Beaver) job appealed to me.

“Beaver has always been a good football school and the challenge to keep the tradition (going) was important in my decision to come to Beaver.”

From the minute he arrived at Beaver, Tarquinio did indeed keep the tradition going. The Bobcats went 8-2, 9-0-1 and 10-0 in his first three seasons.

In 1970, ’71 and ’72, he led the Bobcats to the WPIAL Class 2A championship games. They lost the first two of those games, 8-7 to Richland and 14-7 to Jeannette. But in 1972, Beaver won its first WPIAL title with a 20-14 win over Freeport.

Then in 1981 and ’82, the Bobcats won WPIAL titles again, beating Knoch 12-7 in the 3A final and Jeannette 18-13 in the 2A final, respectively.

One of the keys to Beaver’ success under Tarquinio was his commitment to a strong running game.

While defensive coordinator Ed Snitger handled the defense, Tarquinio oversaw an offense that typically featured strong offensive lines and quality running backs.

Backs like Herb Ellis in the late 1960s, Jeff Hardy in the early 1970s, Ingram in the late 1970s, Shiloh Icenhour in the early 1980s and Tom Reid in the late 1980s, to just name a few.

“Three yards and a cloud of dust,” said John Lehman, a tight/end linebacker on the ’81 and ’82 championship teams. “You know, three things can happen when you throw the ball and two of them are bad.

“Ball control offense. Disciplined. Repetitive. Run the same plays over and over again. We didn’t care if the opponent knew what we were doing. They had to stop us. That kind of mentality. That was the name of the game in his mind.”

“I always enjoyed coming back and seeing Coach,” said Ingram, who invited Tarquino and his son Tom as his guests to Super Bowl 46 in 2012 when the Giants beat Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

“As a coach, I always taught things that I learned from him, fundamentals he was preaching to us (at Beaver) way back then.”

Tarquinio, a gentleman who never swore, remained at Beaver through the 1999 season when he resigned under pressure from the Beaver School Board. He was replaced by Jeff Beltz, who’s now the superintendent at Hopewell.

Beltz coached Beaver for 21 seasons. So, for a 55-year stretch of consistency, Beaver only had two coaches: Tarquinio and Beltz.

“Coach was an example for all of us,” Beltz said. “He coached with class and humility. He displayed it all the time. He was always professional, always.

“For me personally, he supported me from day one. He was the first person I called when I was offered and accepted the Beaver job.

“I had limited knowledge of Coach prior to that. It was just rooted in the respect all of us in Beaver County had for his longevity and what had given back to football. So, I remember that first conversation I had with him. He thanked me for calling him, of course. And from day one, he supported me and that program.”

After his departure from Beaver, it didn’t take long for Tarquinio to get back into coaching. Before the 2000 season, Andy Robertson, then Hopewell’s coach at the time, offered Tarquinio a position on his staff.

Tarquinio accepted.

Since that 1982 season at Beaver, Tarquinio never made it back to a WPIAL championship game as a head coach, but he did three times at Hopewell.

Hopewell lost in the 2001 and 2009 finals, but in 2002 the Vikings won WPIAL and state 3A titles.

“He was our assistant head coach,” Vestal said.  “He was involved in every facet of what was going on in our program.

“We worked together with the offensive line. We worked with our running backs. We worked so hard on our blocking rules and assignments because we felt that was the key to our success. No matter what a team showed us up front, we figured we could block it.”

Paul Posluszny, Hopewell’s tailback at the time, agreed.

“It’s sad to see him go,” said Posluszny, who spent 11 years in the NFL as a linebacker. “Great man and an outstanding coach. He was someone special to us.

“When you think of that 2002 state championship team, and what he did for us … his experience and his understanding of our offense and everything he brought, man, he was a special coach to have around.

“As a running back, let’s be honest, I was fortunate because we had a great offensive line. All I had to do was just run on a straight line and go. But Coach Tarquinio did an unbelievable job teaching us the nuances of that zone read and where we could find holes and where cut-backs were going to be. He had so much experience with it.

“He’d say, ‘Paul, you’re going to go three or four steps this way and then you’re going to see a lane open up over there.’ And he was right. Unbelievable knowledge and experience he was able to communicate with us.”

Tarquinio stayed at Hopewell through the 2014 season. He then followed Vestal to Seneca Valley for two years.

When Vestal resigned as coach at Seneca Valley, Tarquinio returned to Beaver as a volunteer assistant. He spent six years while Beltz was coaching and then the past two seasons under current coach Cort Rowse, a Beaver grad who played for Tarquinio in the 1980s.

“Pat was a great mentor, friend and father figure to me,” Vestal said. “He cared so much about the kids he coached. He touched the lives of so many. He was an amazing coach and an incredible man. I was blessed to have him in my life.”

Over the years, Tarquinio earned so many awards for his coaching ability that it’s hard to mention them all. He was Conference Coach of the Year several times. He was head coach for the Pennsylvania team in the 1991 Big 33 Classic.

He’s in the Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame, the WPIAL Hall of Fame, the Juniata College Sports Hall of Fame, the Pennsylvania State Football Coaches Hall of Fame and the Western Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.

Tarquinio once told the Beaver County Times that, "Coaching has been such a big part of my life that I wouldn’t know what to do without it."

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: 'That's our coach': Former players, coaches remember Beaver's Pat Tarquinio