Back to basics: Roebuck assumes reins of Brownsville football team with simple philosophy
Jim Downey | Herald-Standard
Brownsville baseball coach Skooter Roebuck patrols the third base coaching box during the 2019 season. Roebuck, who has won over 300 games as the Falcons baseball coach, was hired recently as head coach of Brownsville’s football team. Roebuck is also the school’s athletic director.
Rob Burchianti | Herald-Standard
Laurel Highlands’ Daniel Carney (18) pursues Brownsville’s Antwan Black (6) during a game at Redstone Field last season. The Falcons suffered through their second consecutive 0-7 season. Brownsville recently hired athletic director and baseball coach Skooter Roebuck as its new football coach.
Brownsville athletic director Skooter Roebuck was hoping to find the next Falcons football coach somewhere inside the school district as the team heads into its first year as an independent.
What he didn’t expect was for that search to circle back around to him.
“I talked to administration and we thought the way to go was to have somebody in-house,” Roebuck explained. “So I talked to every teacher that had some kind of coaching experience, in any sport really, and was seeing if I could get them on board or, if they had a football background, to take the program over.”
“I think to change the culture has to come from within,” Roebuck said, then added with a chuckle, “And, I guess it kind of spun out of control and morphed into it’s going to be me. Teasingly, I tell people the ADs get blamed for everything anyways so I might as well put the big target on my back.”
Resuscitating the floundering program — Brownsville is a combined 15-130 since 2005, the last year it won more than two games in a season when it went 4-5 — is no laughing matter to Roebuck. His baseball team has one of the best winning traditions in the WPIAL and he badly wants to try to steer the football program in that direction.
“I’m going to try to see if I can carryover our baseball success,” Roebuck said. “That’s the message I gave the boys. I brought them all down and told them I think successful people win, it doesn’t necessarily mean winning on the baseball field, football field or on the court.
“We’re just going to take the philosophy I have for baseball and try to see if it works for football and go from there.”
Roebuck explained that philosophy.
“We tell our kids in baseball we want them to be as successful as possible in every situation,” he said. “It’s not just on the field, it’s also dealing with the teacher and classes, dealing with the parents, dealing with other kids in the hallway. But, on the field it’s just work and master the basics.
“Our baseball practices are basic, just do the fundamental things everyday. We’re going to try to bring that to football.”
Brownsville’s baseball team has won over 300 games, 11 section titles and played in two WPIAL championship games, winning one in 2018, in 27 years under Roebuck. The Falcons reached the PIAA semifinals in 1999 and 2018.
In football, Brownsville was 0-7 and finished last in the Class AAA Interstate Conference last season under first-year coach Brian Gates, who had an extremely youthful roster with only a few seniors and juniors.
Gates was against the move to leave the WPIAL and stepped down after the season.
Roebuck, who will be the football team’s sixth head coach in seven years, sees the move to independent status as necessary to help the program survive.
“The goal is to try to get the numbers back and try to get the point where we’re competitive,” Roebuck said. “Then, hopefully, if we can get this turned around and headed in the right direction we would jump back in (to the WPIAL) and see what happens.”
Roebuck was encouraged by his meeting with potential players for next season.
“It seemed like we had some numbers and interest,” he said. “We’ll find out soon. My baseball team has been lifting. I opened the weight room to anyone that wants to play football, so we’ll find out what the numbers are like for that.”
Anyone who views Roebuck as a baseball coach trying to coach football would be incorrect.
“I’ve been a football coach for about 18 years, off and on, as an assistant,” Roebuck pointed out. “I was a coach at Belle Vernon under Billy Connors back in ’89. That was my first coaching job out of college so it was football first for me, I had that job before I got hired as a baseball coach.”
Roebuck points to a couple other Fayette County football programs that have pulled out of the WPIAL as blueprints for the Falcons.
“We’ve seen what Albert Gallatin has done and what Uniontown is doing,” Roebuck said. “We just want to put in a foundation and get this thing on the right track.”