Menhart to step down as Carmichaels football coach
At least for the time being, John Menhart is taking a knee. Tonight, Menhart will officially tender his resignation at the Carmichaels Area School District’s monthly board meeting, ending a 14-year reign as Mikes head football coach.
Wanting to spend more time with his wife Cassie, son Jono and daughter Jamie, while having the opportunity to follow his son’s collegiate athletic career led Menhart to his decision, a difficult one.
“Actually, I’m not sure I’m ready to stop coaching,” Menhart said. “But there are some things that are going to come up here in the near future that I might not be able to devote the necessary time to … I’ve never missed a practice in 24 years. If you’re the head coach, the team has to come first.
“Jono is going away to school and we have a couple other things happening. For this year, I’m going to do what I have to do in what I think is best for my family and the team. I can’t expect kids to be here every day if I’m not.”
Menhart, 46, will actually coach one more game, the Tri-County Coaches Association All-Star Game in June, before hanging up his coaching duds for at least the time being.
“I might never coach again after that,” he said. “I’m definitely taking next year off, but who knows what opportunities might present themselves. I have to see if I can live without football. I know that sounds like a hell of a thing …
“I’ve known football longer than I’ve known my wife or kids, but not that it is nearly as important. I just don’t know how it’s going to feel to not be out there. The toughest part of this whole thing was when I met with the team. They knew, but now it’s official. I didn’t want them to read it in the paper. The assistant coaches and I met at my house as a group Tuesday. I told them my plans and we discussed some things. If things could work out, they would all like to stay. Nothing could make me feel better.”
After lettering three years in football, twice in baseball and basketball, and once in track at Carmichaels, Menhart attended Indiana University of Pa., where he won three letters in football. In high school, Menhart was selected All-County and All-Conference as a running back three times (1971-73). He stands in third place all-time with 266 career points, behind Glenn Ellsworth and Rocky Doman, and he also registered the fifth-highest Mikes’ point total in a single season, with 132 points in 1973.
Menhart became an assistant during Vic Lapkowicz’s last season in 1978, and stayed in the position under the next head coach, Tom McCombs, for 10 of the next 11 years. Then Menhart, after discussing the matter with his wife, took over as head coach in 1989, and has guided Carmichaels to the WPIAL playoffs seven times, including the past five seasons.
“In the beginning, Cassie and I said, ‘We’ll do this for five years and see what happens,”‘ Menhart said. “Five years came and went and the last 14 years have gone by so fast. We didn’t even talk about giving it up after the five years was up. Cassie enjoys the coaching as much as I did. Sometimes, she actually wanted to go to certain games, where before, she could have cared less about football.
“There’s nights I’ll go to bed watching Monday Night Football and she’ll stay up to see who won. She’s been really supportive.”
Menhart’s record at Carmichaels stands at 80-59-2 in the regular season, but just 2-7 in the postseason. Those two wins, however, came last year following an undefeated regular season and landed the Mikes in the District 7 semifinals opposite Rochester, the eventual WPIAL champion and PIAA runners-up.
Over the past five years, Carmichaels has posted a 42-9 regular-season record, winning Tri-County South titles in 1998, 2000 and 2002. Postseason victories last November over Canevin and Fort Cherry snapped a string of bad luck in which the Mikes played well enough to win several playoff games but somehow still found ways to lose.
“Those victories were real important,” Menhart said. “They were really important, not so much for me, but for the kids. There was that doubt, there was that stigma attached to us … There was a connotation of inadequacy. Our kids are better than that. We’ve had some incredibly bad things happen to us in playoff games and we were better than that. Winning one was real important. It was as important to those kids who suffered the heart-breaking losses as it was to our team last season. And that made it really special.”
Menhart also describes his situation at Carmichaels as special. He’s had the chance to coach his son, Jono, the starting quarterback for the past two seasons, and he’s also settled into a job as assistant principal, which, Menhart said, will allow him to hopefully reach out and help more students.
“I’ve had school board members tell me they won’t accept my resignation,” Menhart said. “But everyone here has been very supportive. I know there was a story going around when I took the job as assistant principal that I could coach for two more years until Jono graduated. But since then, the school board has been nothing but supportive and they’ve actually encouraged me to stay on as coach.
“Everything I’ve talked about is ‘We’. This is a program. It’s not ‘Me’. There couldn’t be a better place in the world to coach than Carmichaels High School from the administration, to the school board to the community. Everyone hasn’t agreed with what I’ve done, but I don’t care. We’ve always done what we’ve thought was best for our kids and that was the bottom line.
“Probably some of my most successful teams might have had losing records, but they exceeded what they thought they had the potential to do. That sounds kind of twisted, but it’s true. Maybe we had kids who should have been a 1-8 team and they ended up 4-6. They worked so hard and exceeded what they probably should have done.”