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Coss up to challenge for Waynesburg football

3 min read
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Chad Coss has coached high school football at three of the Greene County high schools and learned a great deal assisting such luminaries as Russ Moore and George Messich.

The 42-year-old Coss will need to draw on that experience and put that knowledge to good use now that he had the word “interim” removed from his head coaching title with a 9-0 vote at a recent Central Greene School Board meeting.

And Coss is eager to mold this young Raiders team into a winner.

“We have to get it back on track to be a winning program,” he said. “We’ve been lacking there for the past couple years. We need to get back to being a playoff team.

“One of the reasons I took the job is that we have a great group of kids. I’m really excited to coach them. We have a good offensive line coming back, and a great group of running backs.”

Coss took over as interim head coach at Waynesburg after Russ Moore was asked to resign with two games remaining in what would be a 1-8 season. The 28-player roster had only three seniors and as many as five freshmen started a game during the season.

“There were no problems,” he said of the coaching change. “The kids responded fine. It was like we never missed a beat here.”

The WPIAL did not do Coss or Waynesburg any favors with the most recent realignment. The Raiders were placed into the rugged Section 1 of Class AAA with perennial powers Aliquippa, Beaver Falls, Central Valley and defending state champion Quaker Valley.

But Coss brushes it off. He will not be intimidated and doesn’t expect his team to be.

“Every conference is the same,” Coss said. “You have your two powerhouse teams each year and we can compete with the others.”

Coss is encouraged by a middle school program that has shown talent.

“We have some good athletes coming up,” he said. “We already have some coming up and lifting. Down the road, Raiders football will be picking back up.”

Coss spent five years through two stops at Waynesburg. He spent time under Messich at Mapletown and under his cousin Jon Coss at West Greene.

“I coached with some great head coaches and two of them – Jon Coss and Dave Sarra – will be on my staff,” he said. “It’s good to be under different head coaches so you learn what to do and what not to do.”

Coss is a 1993 graduate of Waynesburg and was a two-year football letterman at Geneva College.

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