43
Beany tapped to take over at Fitch
By Tom Williams
AUSTINTOWN
Austintown Fitch High is turning its boys basketball program over to a coach well-versed in Falcons lore.
On Monday, the Austintown Board of Education is expected to approve Brian Beany as the new Fitch boys coach. Beany, a 1989 graduate of Fitch, played for Coach Tom Fender and has been involved with the Falcons program as a coach since 1993.
This fall, Fitch will be a member of the All-American Conference Red Tier in all sports except football.
“The All-American Conference has some great teams and coaches,” said Beany, who added that the Falcons’ old conference, the Federal League, “probably was the best conference in the state. Competition-wise, you couldn’t beat it.”
When Jason Baker was head coach the past two seasons, Beany was the seventh-grade coach so he could spend time coaching his son, Brian.
Last month, Baker resigned after the Falcons went 5-16 in their final season in the Federal League.
Beany says a major challenge is to get the Fitch players “to believe in themselves and that they can win games. Once you start to win, a positive attitude starts and it becomes contagious.” A downside of the Federal League was the travel. Weeknight games meant players didn’t have time to go home after school and often returned after 10:30 p.m.
“And it’s hard for a teen to be able to drive an hour and 15 minutes to see a game,” Beany said of the fans. “So the AAC will be great for our students and our parents.
“It’s a chance to develop [local] rivalries,” Beany said. “We’ll be playing local teams and the kids kind of know each other. You’ll get the fans back and that’s great for us.”
A Youngstown State University graduate, Beany has been a health and physical education teacher for Austintown for 13 years. He teaches fourth and fifth graders at Frank Ohl Intermediate School and sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Austintown Middle School.
Beany’s coaching experience includes being Gary Conroy’s varsity assistant. He was the junior varsity coach when Roger Day took over the program in 2005.
Beany said he doesn’t expect anything to come easy in the AAC.
“There is an opportunity [to improve] but we’re not going to walk on the court and teams will bow down just because we are a bigger school. But we have a chance to compete.”
Beany has stories to share of Fitch’s basketball glory days. He was a member of the 1988 team that won the Steel Valley Conference title outright.
And he’s glad he spent time with the youngest players in the program.
“Sometimes at the high-school level, you don’t appreciate what needs to need to go on down there,” said Beany of fundamentals. “One thing we’ve tried to do with the youth program is try to get kids excited.”
Beany said the creation of travel teams among the fifth and sixth graders should help spark interest when those players reach high school.