Jimmy Russell was a Mon Valley coaching fixture
Over the decades area high schools have been blessed with some outstanding football coaches. One was Jimmy Russell, who ran programs for Donora and Belle Vernon for an eon.
The Dragons first head coach, John Anderson, held the job from 1915-1935 before Russell took over and drew up the X’s and O’s through 1965. Russell then became the first head coach to run the Belle Vernon Area program. He then wrapped up his WPIAL-record string of 38 consecutive years by coaching the Leopards through the 1968 season.
Russell, a 1925 graduate of Charleroi High, attended Notre Dame and played under Knute Rockne, who once asked Russell to help coach one of the Irish freshman teams. Rockne thought so highly of Russell he later used him to scout an upcoming opponent, Carnegie Tech. “In fact,” remembered Donora football star Bimbo Cecconi, “Knute Rockne wrote the recommendation that helped Russell get the coaching job here.”
As a new coach, Russell installed the Notre Dame shift to the Donora attack. Winning days ensued. Also, possessing an “in” with the Irish, Russell would send many of his players to the beautiful South Bend, Indiana, campus.
In a 2013 interview, former DHS head coach Rudy Andabaker recalled that while Russell was a big Notre Dame supporter, he once told Russell, “You don’t realize it, but when you look at the books, you had eight [kids who played for you at Donora] who were captains at Pitt. That’s a big honor.”
When a head football coach from a town in the Mon Valley is so successful that Hall of Famers remember his name and what he’s accomplished, he has reached the pinnacle of his career.
Mike Ditka, the first tight end to be inducted into the Football Hall of Fame, said, “If Jimmy Russell recommended somebody, the colleges would take him because he was one of the main coaches in Western Pennsylvania, like my [Aliquippa] coach, Carl Aschman. We used to scrimmage Donora when I was in high school, and Russell was a very good coach. I know that Coach Aschman was a great fan of Jimmy Russell.”
A national magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, ran an article in October 1955 entitled “The Town That Spawns Athletes,” touting Donora’s crop of football players which “always flourishes.” The article listed two of Russell’s biggest stars, Arnold “Pope” Galiffa and “Deacon” Dan Towler, and stated, “In recent years 211 boys from Donora have received athletic scholarships at U.S. colleges.” It added that in the fall of 1955 alone, “more than two dozen Donora boys” were expected to play college football. Judging by Russell’s success, they could just as easily have entitled the story “Jimmy Russell — The Man Who Spawns Football Stars.”
Russell won the WPIAL championship in 1944, 1945, and 1953. Over the 1944-45 seasons his teams scored a staggering 621 points while surrendering just 57. To win the 1945 title, Donora crushed New Kensingston, 38-7, even though that foe sent six of its starters to Michigan State where they later made it to a Rose Bowl game. Experts believed Donora was the second-best high school team in the nation.
Earlier, in the 1942 and 1943 seasons, Donora had faced Turtle Creek, which featured Leon Hart, a future Notre Dame All-American who became the last lineman to win the Heisman Trophy (in 1949), and the Dragons annihilated them both times.
According to one rating system, Donora was the state champ in both 1944 and 1945, and they finished in the top 10 Pennsylvania schools five times, in all, under Russell.
Russell was a fine motivator who sometimes gathered his players at their home facility, Legion Field, and made it a point to inform his troops, “There are two roads from this field. One leads down that hill to the mill. If you want to be just another fellow making some sort of living, then don’t bother to work hard out here. The mill is where you’ll wind up. But if you really want to make something out of yourself, play football hard and study hard. Then you can take the road out of here to a good college.”
Monessen’s Bill Malinchak, who followed such a road and made it to the NFL, said, “Donora had wonderful football teams. When they used to compare the great teams from Western Pa., I think that it was always Donora-Monessen, or Monessen-Donora, those teams back in the 40s and 50s. Donora had those great teams in the 40s, unbelievable teams.”
Doug Crusan, who played on two NFL championship teams with Miami, and who also played his high school football for Monessen, praised Russell for “putting out good football teams. He had a bunch of tough kids and he put them together.”
Russell is one of just a handful of Mon Valley coaches who are in the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Both he and Monessen’s Joe Gladys joined that group in 1994. Russell, a lifelong Valley man, passed away in 1995 at the age of 88.