Trinity opens football coach job
Trinity High School is looking for a new head football coach to replace Jon Miller. And the Hillers could use a new boys soccer coach, too.
Trinity has opened its head football coach position, which Miller held since the 2015 season. The Hillers also need to find a replacement for boys soccer coach Ryan Julian, who left last month to become the head coach at Canon-McMillan.
Miller had a 25-38 record at Trinity in seven seasons, including a 22-29 mark in the Class 4A Big Seven Conference that includes powerhouses Thomas Jefferson and Belle Vernon. When he was hired, Miller became the third Trinity head coach in five years.
“Jon did a decent job,” Trinity athletic director Ricci Rich said.
Trinity made the playoffs one time under Miller, that happening in 2017. The Hillers had a 6-4 record that year and lost 42-0 to conference rival Thomas Jefferson in the first round of the WPIAL playoffs.
Since then, Trinity has gone 12-23 with four consecutive losing seasons. One of Trinity’s best wins under Miller came in the pandemic-plagued 2020 season when the Hillers blanked Washington 41-0 at Hiller Field in the first meeting between the crosstown rivals since 1999.
Rich said that he hopes to begin interviewing potential head coaches by the end of the month.
“I believe it’s an attractive job,” he said. “If you look at our facilities, look at the makeup of our kids and look at the community support we get, then you have to think we should get some good candidates.
“We’d like to get someone in here as soon as possible. We’d like to get them in here and get them involved in the weight room. We also have 7-on-7s coming up.”
One thing the new coach will have to do is increase the numbers in the program. Miller inherited a program that was sorely lacking in roster size and depth and those areas improved during his tenure, but Trinity was always fighting the numbers game against the top teams in the Big Seven.
“We’ve always floated around that 37 to 40 players number,” Rich said. “Not everybody has that kind of a problem. You look at McGuffey. They have good numbers. Look at Wash High. They always have good numbers.
“We’re 10 boys under Class 5A enrollment. I’d like to have 50 or 60 kids on the team. With that kind of enrollment, you should be able to get 15 kids per grade. Is that always possible? No, it’s not. But getting 50 players out for the team is 10 percent of the boys in the school.”
Julian had rebuilt Trinity’s soccer program and guided the Hillers to a 35-14-2 record over the last three seasons. In 2019, the Hillers were 14-5 and made the WPIAL quarterfinals.