Nov 26, 2013 5 min read

Just a few summers ago, Brian Coyne stood in his backyard with a football and a dream. Coyne, then a freshman at South Fayette High School, lined up and took position to kick the ball through a tree that resembled a goal post.

Fast forward to last Saturday and Coyne, the kicker for the Lions’ football team and the leading scorer for coach Rob Eldridge’s Class AA runner-up soccer program, made an impact with his foot and two plays that awed the crowd.

South Fayette head coach Joe Rossi, who works as a physical education teacher at the district’s middle school, met Coyne as an eighth grader and heard of his prowess on the soccer pitch. When Coyne was excelling for South Fayette’s soccer tean, Rossi asked Eldridge if Coyne would be interested in kicking for the football team.

It was a perfect match. Coyne had been dreaming of kicking for the team since his days kicking in his backyard.

“I was excited because I have always wanted to kick,” Coyne said. “It’s a dream come true.”

Less than a month after leading the Lions’ soccer team to the WPIAL championship game at Highmark Stadium, Coyne kicked two critical field goals for South Fayette as wind tossed flurries across Heinz Field in the Lions’ 34-28 championship win over Aliquippa. It was his first multiple-field-goal game of the season, but the conditions during Saturday did not faze Coyne.

While attending various college camps during the summer, including a kicking camp at Notre Dame, Coyne learned from coaches to visualize the worst possible conditions when kicking during practice. In the days leading up to the Class AA title game, Coyne pictured 10 inches of snow and a roaring crowd of opposing fans as he lined up for each kick.

“He’s a tremendous athlete and a tremendous kid,” Rossi said. “As I always do, I asked (Coach Eldridge), who I’m great friends with, and he said absolutely. Brian was a key factor in the game Saturday night. You hear all of the horror stories of kickers having trouble at Heinz Field in the snow but he was simply tremendous.”

Coyne’s athleticism was put to the test late in the first quarter when kicking off to Aliquippa. After his kick sailed 51 yards, Aliquippa sophomore running back Kaezon Pugh split two defenders, sprinted up the sideline with nothing but Coyne standing between him and a touchdown and an eight-point lead for the Quips.

Pugh, who is an imposing underclassmen at 6-0, 195 pounds, lowered his shoulder and attempted to run over the 175-pound kicker, but Coyne squared up Pugh and tackled him high to prevent the score.

“That was probably my favorite part of the experience, but it was the scariest part of the game for me,” Coyne said. “(My teammates) were having fun with it, but me personally; I’m not a big fan of a 200-pound guy coming at me like that because I’m a smaller guy. Not all soccer players are wimps.”

When Aliquippa took the field on the next play, Quips senior wide receiver Jyier Turner lined up on the outside near Rossi and the Lions. Before the teams huddled up, Turner told Rossi that Coyne, “made a hell of a tackle, but if it were me, I would have scored.”

Turner got a chance to prove his boastful comment correct in the third quarter. Coyne’s kick went 45 yards and Turner replicated Pugh’s return earlier in the game. After following his blocks, the wide receiver found himself alone on the sideline with nothing but Coyne standing in his way. The 5-9 kicker grabbed Turner high and forced him out of bounds, preventing the Quips from taking the lead.

“I wasn’t going to back down,” Coyne said. “I was going to force him out of bounds and he started coming at me. I just kind of tackled him and gave it my best chance. I was just trying to slow him down, and hopefully one of my teammates would get back in time because he probably would have scored. I realized that against Aliquippa, any way you can stop them from scoring points will help the team.”

South Fayette’s victory over the top-seeded Quips puts the Lions in the PIAA Clas AA quarterfinals against Karns City (12-1) Saturday at Clarion University. Kickoff is 1 p.m. While the WPIAL soccer title eluded Coyne, his work with the South Fayette football team has taken his kicking dream into the state playoffs.

“It’s been great,” Coyne said. “I’m just soaking it in. I love soccer and I was disappointed we didn’t bring home the WPIAL title, but it’s been exciting what has happened in football. … It’s been a great year. I know it’s not going to happen that often, especially making it to two WPIAL championships in one season.”