When most people around Western Pennsylvania hear the name Greg Botta, they think football.

They think Franklin Regional. They think about 27 years as a head coach, 177 career victories, seven conference championships, 21 WPIAL playoff appearances and, of course, the unforgettable 2005 season when Franklin Regional went 15-1 and captured both the WPIAL and PIAA championships.

I remember something different.

I remember my elementary school gym teacher. And more importantly, I remember one of the first people in Penn Hills who looked at me as a kid and told me I was going to be special.

 

Before I Was Known for Basketball

My family moved back to Pittsburgh in 1993, when I was in the fifth grade at Washington Elementary School in Penn Hills.

At that point, there was no high school basketball résumé. No WPIAL championship. No 2,000 points. No West Virginia University. No professional basketball. I was just a fifth grader who loved sports.

Coach Botta was my gym teacher, and whenever we played sports in class—especially basketball—he paid attention to me differently.

I can still remember him saying that he had never seen anything like me at that age. He told me I was going to be a special basketball player at Penn Hills and that I was going to go on and do big things in the game. Those words have always stayed with me because of when he said them.

It’s easy to tell somebody they’re special after everybody else already knows.

Coach Botta told me before any of it happened. He saw something.

 

Then Things Started Happening Fast

What makes the memory even crazier is what happened shortly afterward.

Coach Jim Seneca had me playing with the Penn Hills JV and varsity players in the White Oak summer league while I was still in fifth grade.

Think about that.

I had just arrived back in Pittsburgh. Coach Botta was telling me I had a special future in basketball, and suddenly I was a little kid sharing the court with players years older than me. Looking back more than three decades later, I realize just how early he recognized it.

And yes, Coach Botta favored me a little bit in gym class. I knew it. Everybody probably knew it. But I always felt like it came from a genuine place. He believed in me. He made me feel like there was something different about me before I was old enough to fully understand what that could mean.

That’s why I’ll always have love for him. He was the first teacher I had in Penn Hills who really showed me that type of genuine love and belief.

 

While I Was Chasing Basketball, Botta Was Building a Football Program

At the time, I obviously didn’t understand the full scope of Coach Botta’s own journey. His coaching career had begun years earlier.

Botta started coaching as an assistant at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1980 when he was only 20 years old. Before entering coaching, he played linebacker at IUP after transferring from N.C. State, following his own high school football career at Penn Hills.

His coaching journey would eventually include stops at Penn Hills and Swissvale before Franklin Regional became the place where he built his legacy.

Botta joined Franklin Regional as defensive coordinator in 1992 and became head coach two years later. And he wasn’t taking over a powerhouse. He took over a program that had endured the longest losing streak in the WPIAL.

People told him he couldn’t win there. One year after taking over, Franklin Regional was playing for a WPIAL championship at Three Rivers Stadium.

That alone tells you something about the coach. But he wasn’t finished.

 

The 2005 Team Changed Franklin Regional History

A decade later came the season that forever cemented Greg Botta’s name in Western Pennsylvania high school football history.

In 2005, Franklin Regional went 15-1. The Panthers won the first WPIAL football championship in school history and then kept going, capturing the PIAA Class AAA state championship.

That wasn’t simply another successful football season. It was the culmination of years spent building a program people once told him couldn’t win.

Botta was ultimately named the Associated Press Pennsylvania Class AAA Coach of the Year.

By the time his 27-year run as Franklin Regional’s head coach ended in 2021, the numbers were remarkable: 177 victories. Seven conference championships. 21 WPIAL playoff appearances. 16 consecutive playoff appearances at one point. A WPIAL championship. A PIAA championship.

Those numbers put his longevity into perspective.

But I have my own way of looking at it.

 

He Coached at Franklin Regional Longer Than My Entire Basketball Career

This is the part that blows my mind.

When Coach Botta became Franklin Regional’s head football coach, I was basically still that kid he knew from elementary school.

Then my entire basketball journey happened. Penn Hills. High school championships and individual accomplishments. Division I basketball at West Virginia. Professional basketball. Playing overseas. And eventually the end of my playing career.

Coach Botta was still coaching Franklin Regional. His run as a head coach lasted longer than my entire basketball career, including college and professional basketball.

That’s incredible.

In sports, we sometimes throw the word “longevity” around too easily. Twenty-seven years leading one high school football program isn’t just longevity. It’s generations.

Think about how many teenagers became grown men during those years. How many players came through his locker room. How many families he dealt with. How many assistant coaches stood beside him. How many Friday nights he spent on a sideline.

And through all of it, Greg Botta remained the head football coach at Franklin Regional.

 

Decades Later, We Reconnected

For years, Coach Botta and I went our separate ways.

I lived my basketball journey, and he continued building his football legacy. Then, during the final years of his career at Franklin Regional, we reconnected. I started going to some games, and we began communicating again.

Eventually I got the opportunity to tell him something I’d been able to think about for decades: Coach, you had an eye for talent.

Because everything he told that fifth-grade kid eventually happened. I became a special player at Penn Hills. I played Division I basketball. I played professionally. Basketball took me places I couldn’t have imagined when I was standing in that elementary school gym.

And one of the first adults to tell me that future was possible was Greg Botta.

 

Sometimes a Few Words Stay With a Kid Forever

That’s probably the biggest reason I wanted to write this story.

Coach Botta’s football accomplishments deserve to be celebrated. Franklin Regional is inducting him into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 2026, another fitting recognition of what he built.

But my appreciation for him goes beyond wins and championships. Sometimes adults don’t realize how much power their words carry when they’re talking to a child. A teacher might say something and forget about it a week later. The kid might remember it for the next 30 years.

I did.

When Coach Botta told me I was going to be special, there was nothing he could gain from saying it. I wasn’t a star yet. There was no attention surrounding me. I was just a kid. He believed in me before there was anything on paper telling him that he should.

That matters to me.

 

More Than a Championship Coach

Greg Botta will rightfully be remembered as one of the great football coaches of his era in Western Pennsylvania. He inherited a program people said couldn’t win and eventually took it to the top of the WPIAL and the state.

He coached generations of young men. He won 177 games. He stayed for 27 years. But when I think about Coach Botta, my mind will always go back even further.

Washington Elementary. Fifth grade. Gym class. Basketball. And a teacher looking at a kid who hadn’t accomplished anything yet and seeing something that kid couldn’t fully see for himself.

More than three decades later, I haven’t forgotten it. I never will.

Thank you, Coach Botta. You saw it before almost anybody else did.