Brad Bestic ready to guide St. Joseph athletics in new role

By: William Whalen
Monday, December 6, 2021 | 10:55 AM

St. Joseph has found its man to guide the athletic department. On Nov. 1, Brad Bestic was hired as the new St. Joseph athletic director and comes to the position ready to lead the school’s teams to the next level.

“I’m just really excited, to be honest,” said Bestic, 32. “The administration, the coaches and the student-athletes are all just good people.

“It’s been my goal to get into athletic administration. I wasn’t looking to just go coach somewhere else.”

Bestic is the fifth athletic director at St. Joseph since 2017. He will oversee eight varsity sports.

Bestic replaces Ron Moncrief, who moved on to Mohawk, where he serves as both athletic director and the girls varsity basketball coach.

Bestic and Moncrief go way back. Bestic was the assistant athletic director under Moncrief at Vincentian Academy before the school closed at the end of the 2019-20 academic school year.

“I’m really good friends with Ron Moncrief, and he informed me that he was moving into another direction and I knew about the school with the years of competing and playing against them,” said Bestic, a 2007 Vincentian grad. “I asked him if it would be a good fit, and he said, ‘yeah.’ ”

Bestic is no stranger to building a winning culture, especially at a small school. He was both an assistant coach and head coach for the two-time PIAA and WPIAL championship baseball teams at Vincentian (2017-18).

Last season, Bestic coached the Knoch baseball team to a third-place finish in Section 1-4A and guided the Knights into the postseason, where they lost to Quaker Valley in the first round.

Bestic also will take the reins of a struggling St. Joseph baseball team this spring.

“As part of the agreement, I am going to be coaching the boys baseball team,” Bestic said. “I’ve been blessed with having some really nice teams (in the past). I was head coach at Knoch for one year. There’s a really nice senior class there at Knoch.

“But long term, this seems like a really nice fit. We have some work to do there.”

Bestic understands the challenges that await him at a small school. First thing is getting the student body invested and motivated to compete in varsity sports.

“It’s a good challenge because they’re so used to the smaller scale there,” Bestic said. “Everyone knows that they need to pull their weight and do their part. It makes everyone more invested.”

Bestic was floored the first time he walked into Dlubak Athletic Center.

“I walked in there, I had not seen the new gym, but holy cow,” Bestic said. “I walked in there and thought this could arguably be one of the best gyms in the WPIAL. It’s a hidden gem in Natrona Heights.

“We need to get the word out there about St. Joe’s.”

Bestic understands athletics can helps increase enrollment and, most importantly, helps put a small school such as St. Joseph on the map.

“Let’s face it: Athletics is a driving force,” Bestic said. “This can be a place that houses more student-athletes and really develops these individuals for outside of high school.”

Bestic’s first order of business was to put together St. Joseph’s annual tip-off and holiday tournaments. The tip-off tourney is set for Dec. 10-11, and the Holiday Classic is scheduled for Dec. 28-29.

“I’m just gonna work my tail off to get our name out there,” Bestic said. “We have great values. We’re gonna start doing some unique things athletically that are gonna allow us to showcase some of the student-athletes that we have.”

William Whalen is a freelance writer.

Tags: St. Joseph