Shocking news as one of the most successful coaches in the state of Pennsylvania has been let go.
The Pine-Richland School District has fired long-time football coach Eric Kasperowicz and his entire coaching staff. In his eight seasons with the Rams, Kasperowicz compiled a record of 85-18, along with winning four WPIAL Championships and two PIAA Championships.
Rumors of this move started floating around the Pine-Richland School District on Monday and was made official Monday evening. Pittsburgh Sports Now has been told that the school board was scheduled to speak Monday in person with Kasperowicz to talk about this future but instead alerted him of their decision prior to the meeting via e-mail.
As far as the reason for this surprising move, members of the team and people within the district are being told it’s over alleged off-the-field issues, including hazing within the program.
The Pine-Richland football program has been the gold standard for other programs within the state and this news has stirred up plenty of emotions within the district especially from his players, who deny any incidents of hazing and back their former coach 100%.
“I was in total disbelief when I heard what happened,” Pine-Richland linebacker Luke Miller told PSN. “I was walking into the stadium tonight and my two assistant coaches were talking out and said we just got fired. I continued to walk and saw some of the upcoming seniors coming out that have a chance to play Division-I next year and they had tears in their eyes. It was the worst thing that I’ve ever seen and so sad. I think it’s a complete joke. I don’t think Coach K has done one bad thing to this district and has done so much for so many of his players on and off the field. Everyone at Pine-Richland right now is enraged.
“As far as the hazing incident, I’ve never heard about that before. I think that has more to do with a personal issue with someone in the school with Coach K. Honestly, they’ve been trying to do this for a while now with him. It’s completely disgusting and disrespectful. The hazing thing is totally made up because there’s not been one kid that’s been hazed or bullied.”
PSN also talked with Cole Spencer, Pine-Richland’s quarterback this past season and he echoed a lot of what Miller had to say.
“I just think all of this is crazy,” said Spencer. “The principals have pulled me in twice and asked me about alleged incidents. I’ve been with the team for a while and I haven’t seen any of the things that they were mentioning. They mentioned multiple incidents and to my knowledge none of that has ever happened. For them to take it this far and fire the whole staff, it’s ridiculous.
“I talked to Coach K earlier today. He knew this investigation about all this was going on but he didn’t know what they were actually going to do until last night. He said that he was supposed to come in for a meeting tonight at 8 p.m. and last night he saw a screen shot of a text saying that Coach was going to be fired ‘Yeah!’ and it was from a school board member. That’s when he was like ‘oh no’ and knew things were going downhill from there.
“I believe this all has to do with hate for Coach from the school board. They’ve been after him for a while and trying to find every little thing. Even with other sports, I know that other sports have similar problems but even with COVID, wearing our masks and social distancing, they were on him way harder than any other coaches. It was pretty obvious that they wanted him out of there. I’m not sure why but they found a way to get him out.”
Pittsburgh Sports Now has reached out to Kaspewrowicz for a comment but have not heard back from him.
