Mike Zmijanac, one of the winningest head coaches in WPIAL football history, and the Beaver County Times is reporting that he will be joining the staff at Ambridge high school where he will serve as a volunteer assistant.
Over his 24 seasons as head coach Zmijanac amassed 240 wins to just 59 losses. He served most of those years as head coach of Aliquippa High School from 1997-2017, where he won six WPIAL titles and one PIAA title. The Aliquippa school board released him of his duites as head coach, controversially, after the 2017 season. He since has coached at Ringgold High School for the 2018 season and then at Seton LaSalle for the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
At Ambridge, Zmijanac will work with second-year head coach Sherman McBride. McBride is a 1980 graduate of Aliquippa and worked as an assistant coach under Zmijanac at the school for those 21 seasons he served as head coach. He also spent two years in a similar role under Zmijanac during his time at Seton LaSalle.
Zmijanac will help McBride in his attempts to improve football at Ambridge. The school only had a 1-44 record before he came in as head coach and helped get the team to a 2-7 record and a playoff berth last season in Class 3A. Now the Bridgers moved up to Class 4A for the 2022 season and the task of improving the football will need both coaches experience if they want to progress further.
