Sometimes it doesn't pay to argue.
Ask Jay Lustig, Belle Vernon Area High's golf coach the last five years.
An argument with Uniontown coach Aaron Scott ended up costing him his job.
"The WPIAL flexed its muscle and left Belle Vernon with no alternative," said Lustig.
Lustig was told Belle Vernon's golf team would be dropped from the WPIAL if he came back next season.
The third coach in the school's history behind George Estok and Jimmy Russell, Lustig may have been the most successful in his brief stint.
The Leps had a misleading 64-21 overall record since the team went 7-12 in his first campaign with mostly freshmen and sophomores.
The last four years, the Leps went 53-15 including a school-record 35 straight victories, won two section titles, advanced to four WPIAL emifinals and one WPIAL final.
Prior to Lustig arrival, the Leps had made the WPIAL playoffs only once in 1986 under Estok.
Estok coached 21 years with 10 seasons in the Mon Valley Scholaastic League and 11 in the WPIAL followed by Russell with 12 years in the WPIAL.
• McKeesport wasn't the WPIAL's first choice for today's basketball doubleasder involving the two Monessen teams.
Yough athletic director Tom Evans, who's busy these days as a member of the WPIAL wrestling committee, turned the offer down to host the Greyhounds and Lady Greyhounds since he didn't think the Cougars' gym would have enough seats.
Ironically, Yough's 1,200 seating capacity is 100 more than McKeesport's capacity.
• Charleroi High girls' basketball coach Nick Mahalko has decided to step down as one of the school's track assistants after 11 seasons.
"It just took too much time," said Mahalko, who went 20-2 with the Lady Cougars for the best record in the school's history.
Oddly enough, Mahalko will be replaced on Joe Caruso's staff by one of his basketball assistant Joe Grotz.
Caruso, incidentally, was on the Lady Cougars' bench for the last time in their playoff loss to Beaver Falls the other night.
He had been Mahalko's aide for 10 years.
If it wouldn't have been for open heart surgery four years ago which sidelined him for one campaign, the 58-year-old Caruso would have had 40 straight years as a basketball coach on all levels starting in the midget league.
Caruso has also been Charleroi's head track coach since 1991.
The upcoming track campaign will be a tough one for Charleroi which will be on theroad for all of its meets due to construction at its new football stadium.
• Mariusz Wach, the Polish heavyweight being trained by Monessen's Michael Moorer, stopped Jonathan Haggler in three rounds last Saturday in Newark, N.J., to up his record to 24-0 with 12 KOs. The 6-7 Wach weighed in at 249.
• And thanks to Jim Chacko of Charleroi, who says faith is like a toothbrush - every man should have one and use it regularly, but he shouldn't try to use someone else's!
