While his Freeport football teams rode an incredible wave of success, coach Don Earley remained humble.
Always willing to step back and give his assistant coaches and players credit for the program's success, the Yellowjackets became the gold standard for Alle-Kiski Valley high school football.
When asked by a reporter about the team's astounding legacy in the northern reaches of the WPIAL, Earley simply said “we just got ourselves a good little football team out here.”
Earley, the architect of that “good little football team,” died Wednesday at Forbes Regional Hospital in Monroeville. He was 85.
Here's all one has to know about Freeport football under Earley: In modern-day WPIAL football, the top four conference teams make the playoffs. If those rules were in effect when he coached, Freeport would have made the playoffs all 19 seasons Earley was in charge. In all 19 seasons (1967-85), Freeport went into the penultimate week of the regular season still in playoff contention.
Earley's coaching career started in 1958 at Washington Township High School and continued until 1985 at Freeport. His record was 200-51-8.
Earley's Washington Township team won the WPIAL Class B title in 1960, and his teams played in seven WPIAL championship games.
Bill Dillen played under Earley in his first season at Freeport and later was a longtime assistant. Dillen followed in Earley's footsteps as a football and track coach with the Yellowjackets.
“He helped me a great deal from the first time I met him,” Dillen said. “He is very well-respected in coaching circles. He taught me a lot. We're going to miss him.”
Larry Cignetti had a unique perspective. He played for Earley at Washington Township and coached against him while at Leechburg.
“When I took over at Leechburg in 1975, we would have AIC (Allegheny Interscholastic Conference) meetings,” Cignetti recalled. “I had three idols: Don Earley, Bob King (Knoch) and Gene Sullivan (Pine-Richland). I wanted to sit close to them and hear everything they had to say. I learned as much as I could.”
In a 2012 Valley News Dispatch interview, Earley said the secret to Freeport's success was keeping the staff of assistants intact. Dillen, Bob Isenberg, Tom Defillipi and Earley's successor, Gary Kepple, were together a long time.
That was one thing Cignetti learned quickly.
“I saw once we had a close-knit coaching staff, we got it going,” Cignetti said. “We had the people to put the kids in the right direction, and we accomplished that.”
Harold Macurdy, a guard on the 1974 Freeport team that went to the WPIAL finals, organized a picnic for Earley's ex-players in 2012. It started out as a small get-together but quickly blossomed into an event that more than 125 former players attended.
“We loved him with respect,” Macurdy said. “He was a stern man but a fair man. He taught us a lot about how to live. He was like a father to us.”
While speedy backfield players were a key, Earley's calling card at Washington Township and Freeport was defense. In 1972, the Yellowjackets shut out six of 11 opponents.
“He could take a bunch of Girl Scouts and make them into a defense,” Macurdy said.
Besides nurturing a number of coaches, Earley's ex-players have had off-field success.
Dan Leri, a first-team all-state quarterback in 1974, is head of Penn State's Innovation Park. Bob White is in charge of selling skybox seating at Penn State's Beaver Stadium. Ed King is the athletic director at nationally known DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md.
Earley also had a hand in developing Freeport's track program, which has won 10 WPIAL titles.
“And don't forget he won 100 games as basketball coach at Washington Township,” Dillen said. “He was just a good person all the way around.”
Earley was a lineman at Vandergrift High School and earned a scholarship to South Carolina.
Earley was drafted by the Steelers in 1953 but decided to go into education. He is a member of the Alle-Kiski Valley, Armstong County and Pennsylvania Coaches Association halls of fame.
George Guido is a freelance writer.
