Feb 22, 2016 4 min read

When Joe Kuhns accepted a position as an assistant coach on Rick Shepas’ staff at Waynesburg University four years ago, he did so with the thought there was only one position he would leave for which he would go back to high school.

When Ed Woods unexpectedly resigned in early January after 17 seasons as the head coach at Beth-Center, that job was suddenly opened.

Kuhns had a long talk with his wife, Kimberly, and decided to apply for the position at his alma mater.

Tuesday night, Kuhns was hired as Woods’ replacement by the Beth-Center School Board with a 7-2 vote. He will earn a salary of $3,500.

More importantly for Kuhns, he has a chance to be the next in a long line of winning coaches for the Bulldogs, following in the footsteps of Woods, Don Bartolomucci and Bill Connors.

“It’s not just a winning tradition there, it’s a culture,” said Kuhns, a 1987 Beth-Center graduate. “You look at what Ed did there, he had 80 wins in the past 10 years. To do that year-in and year-out, it’s really outstanding. And Bart and Connors did that before him. It’s just a special place.”

Things will be a little different starting this season. With the PIAA moving to six classifications for the 2016-17 school year, Beth-Center will move up to Class AA. The Bulldogs will no longer be competing in the Tri-County South.

Next year’s opponents include old-time traditional rivals Charleroi, Washington and Chartiers-Houston.

“I love it,” said Kuhns, who teaches art at Waynesburg High School. “We’ll be back to playing the schools that I played against when I was in school. It’s basically the old Century Conference. My daughter goes to Beth-Center and I would drop her off at the games and stay and watch and the blowouts (in the Tri-County South) weren’t fun to watch. We’d be up 50-0 at halftime. I think people will enjoy the more competitive games.”

Not that Kuhns doesn’t expect the Bulldogs to continue their winning tradition.

He had plenty of success in his first head coaching stint at California High School, where he began after spending time as an assistant at Jefferson-Morgan and Ringgold.

Kuhns, a California University graduate, went 4-5 in his first season with the Trojans, then made the playoffs in each of the next six seasons, winning a pair of postseason games, before leaving after the 2008 season. His overall record at California was 38-36.

He took over at Waynesburg High School the next three seasons, going 8-20 before joining Shepas’ staff as a linebackers coach.

“I learned so much at Waynesburg,” Kuhns said. “Rick Shepas is an amazing coach. What I learned off of him the past four years in his approach to the game and how he thinks will help me a lot. And honestly, Scott Venick, to me, is the best defensive coordinator in football, I don’t care what level. I can’t wait to bring what I learned from him to the high school level.”

The cupboard at Beth-Center is hardly bare. The Bulldogs are coming off a 7-3 season that included a 28-12 loss to Avonworth in the first-round of the WPIAL playoffs.

But they lost just five seniors from that team, though one includes leading rusher Anthony Welsh.

“When Ed resigned, he said this is a job in which you have to be relentless at,” Kuhns said. “I think that’s true. I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t see Ed stepping down. But 17 years is a long time to coach. It popped up out of the blue. But I’m glad it did.”