Monessen hires Dan Bosnic as boys basketball coach

The boys basketball team at Monessen High School will have a new head coach next season for the first time since 1983.
Dan Bosnic was hired as the Greyhounds’ coach by unanimous vote of the Monessen School Board Monday night.
“I was excited when the opportunity came up,” Bosnic said. “I taught at Monessen previously, so I’m familiar with the community and some of the people in the school.”
Bosnic, the brother of Washington athletic director and football coach Mike Bosnic, coached the boys varsity program at Connellsville from 2009 to 2014. He was the assistant for two seasons under his brother, Nick, before taking over as head coach.
Dan Bosnic is the assistant to the superintendent at Uniontown High School, a position he will retain.
Bosnic replaces longtime Greyhounds coach Joe Salvino, who resigned after last season and was hired by Belle Vernon in mid-May to replace Kyle DeGregorio, who left to become the girls coach at Baldwin.
Salvino won a pair of PIAA championships, six WPIAL titles and had 639 wins in 34 years with the Greyhounds.
“Coach Salvino did a great job and had a great deal of success,” Bosnic said. “But I don’t feel pressure. I have a lot of respect for what this program has done for many years and hope to build off of that success.”
Bosnic said the primary focus will be on the defensive side, continuing a relentless, suffocating defense that has been a stable to the Greyhounds’ successful program under Salvino.
Bosnic will have to deal with the fallout from a brawl with Clairton last February, which resulted in both schools being penalized by the WPIAL with a five-year probation. If an incident in any sport violates that probation, then the WPIAL can deny championship rights and the program will be left out of the next two-year scheduling cycle.
“When you have something like that, you have to learn from it,” he said. “I’m sure the kids and everybody in the program did. I want to move forward from that with expectations for the kids, as students and young men, from day one. I will expect a lot.”
A Laurel Highlands graduate, Bosnic played football at Temple University.