Longtime Southmoreland coach, teacher Brian Pritts takes on athletic director role

By: Bill Beckner Jr.
Tuesday, July 18, 2023 | 4:21 PM

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It was a promotion Brian Pritts was proud to accept.

A true “Southmoreland guy” would be.

Pritts is set to take over as athletic director at Southmoreland, his alma mater and a place where he has taught and coached since 1995.

The former Southmoreland girls basketball coach had been the assistant athletic director to Dan Boring, who resigned effective July 1 to become an elementary associate principal at Derry.

Now, Pritts will take over the department in an elevated role — as soon as he returns from a family vacation to the beach.

“It was a matter of them working with my teaching schedule and they are going to do that,” said Pritts, 50. “I have kids in sports here. The timing was better now for me to take this job.”

Pritts, who taught fifth grade math and science last year, will be a full-time AD while he continues to teach.

He will follow in the footsteps of his father-in-law, Dennis Zieger, a longtime AD at Southmoreland and later at Elizabeth Forward. Zieger also was a well-respected basketball coach.

Both have worked closely with the WPIAL, serving as site managers and holding seats on steering committees.

“I am blessed to have a good mentor like Denny,” said Pritts, a 1990 Southmoreland alum. “We had some talks about it. “I also have been fortunate to work on the (WPIAL) soccer committee and now, the basketball committee, so I have been around some top-tier ADs to see how they do things.”

A girls basketball coach for 19 years in Alverton over two stints (1998-2009 and 2012-20), Pritts’ prized season came in 2019-20, just before the covid pandemic flexed over the country.

Southmoreland’s girls made the WPIAL Class 4A championship game and PIAA second round and finished 25-2. The Scotties were 22-0 during the regular season.

Pritts won 235 games with the program.

He also coached the football team for six years, along with youth and middle school sports, serving as commissioner of the Southmoreland Area Midget Football Association.

Pritts likes the current state of Scotties athletics, so he does not plan to make sweeping changes.

“Dan did a great job and was a great asset to our school,” Pritts said. “In my first year, there will be a lot of feeling out. I am big on communication. I want to have an open line with coaches, kids, the media. … My job is to serve the school, not to make a bunch of changes.”

Pritts will keep a close eye on the Scotties but will continue to watch his family grow. He and his wife Kristin’s children, Brock (13), Bryson (11) and Braylee (6), are all involved in athletics, from football, basketball and baseball to cheerleading.

“I want to be in a position where I can positively influence as many student-athletes and kids as possible,” Pritts said. “If it’s as a coach, teacher or AD, so be it.”

Bill Beckner Jr. is a TribLive reporter covering local sports in Westmoreland County. He can be reached at bbeckner@triblive.com.

Tags: Southmoreland