Waynesburg hires Kuhns for second stint as football coach
Joe Kuhns is an art teacher and a football coach, a combination that he said he knows isn’t common.
“I usually get ‘you must be a phys-ed teacher or a history teacher’ and I tell people, ‘No, I’m a Renaissance man,'” Kuhns joked.
In a sense, Renaissance, is an apt word, because Kuhns is rekindling his high school football coaching career again at a place he once roamed the sidelines.
Kuhns was hired Tuesday night to take over the Waynesburg Central football program for a second time.
He was the coach of the Raiders from 2009-11 and is an art teacher at the high school.
Kuhns takes over for Aaron Giorgi, who was not retained by Waynesburg after four seasons.
It’ll be Kuhns’ fourth high school head coaching job. He spent seven seasons at California, which was before his first stint at Waynesburg, and coached at Beth-Center, his alma mater, from 2016-21.
Kuhns also had two stays on college coaching staffs at Waynesburg University and PennWest California.
He left football coaching after 2023 and filled in as the Raiders’ cross country coach last year, but the desire to return to high school football hadn’t faded.
“I guess the easy way to say it is that it’s an itch that needs scratched,” Kuhns said. “When I was at Cal U, it was a grind. That level of football you’re going seven days a week and if you’re traveling you leave Friday and don’t get home until late Saturday. It’s a lot of hours. I decided to walk away from it, but didn’t want to get completely out of coaching. Our cross country team at Waynesburg needed a coach last year, so I decided to do that, because I’m a runner. That itch to get back into high school football coaching was still there.”
Kuhns said he knows some of the players from having them in class and introduced himself to everyone for the first time Wednesday afternoon.
The Raiders are coming off consecutive seasons in which they made the playoffs.
“They have a very good reputation in the classroom, which is intriguing to me, having kids where you don’t have to worry about any discipline problems,” Kuhns said. “There’s some super-good athletes in the group. This year’s sophomores are a pretty big class with a lot of good players.”
Kuhns has amassed a 65-86 record in 15 years coaching. He’ll bring a veteran presence on the sidelines and said he’s learned plenty through the years.
“I think the biggest thing with experience is if there’s a mistake, I’ve made it somewhere along the way and that stuff teaches you more than anything,” Kuhns said. “My philosophy is always evolving, because the game is always changing. The biggest thing I learned at Cal U was to focus on the process instead of the result. Just work on the individuals and getting them better.”
Kuhns is still working on filling his coaching staff, but did confirm that Derek Bochna, Waynesburg’s defensive coordinator last year, will return.