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 Sig Brauch has proven
to be a trailblazer in Pittsburgh-area soccer. On the college level,
he was the first soccer coach in Robert Morris history, and on the
scholastic level, he started Beaver High School’s program from its
infancy. At Beaver, he became one of the most successful coaches in
the history of the WPIAL, and the winningest coach in Beaver County
history.
Now he has established another landmark for the sport, as Brauch has
become the first individual involved with soccer to be inducted into
the Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame.
Brauch was born in Friedrichshafen, Germany and became immersed in
his country’s national sport at a young age. After his family came
to the United States in the early-1950s, Brauch, along with his
brothers, Manfred and Achim, became standout soccer players for
Edison Technical and Industrial High School in Rochester, NY.
After earning his bachelors and masters degrees, he began his
teaching career at Penn State-Beaver before joining the faculty in
the Beaver School District in 1981, where he is still teaching
German 30 years later. He also began his long coaching career,
serving as an assistant at Blackhawk and Penn State-Beaver before
spending a season as the head coach at Robert Morris.
In 1983, he was asked to start the soccer program from scratch at
Beaver High School, a position he would hold for the next 25 years.
During that quarter century, Brauch led Beaver to the WPIAL playoffs
12 times and the PIAA tournament twice. He won six section
championships at Beaver and led the Bobcats to the WPIAL Class AA
championship game in 2006, losing a 1-0 heartbreaker. When he
stepped down as Beaver’s coach after the 2008 season, Brauch was the
winningest soccer coach in Beaver County history with 293 career
victories.
Brauch also established himself as a widely respected referee on the
professional, college and scholastic levels. He was a USSF soccer
referee under the auspices of the Western Pennsylvania Soccer
Association, and joined the referee ranks of the Tri-State High
School Soccer Referees Association and the U. S. College Soccer
Referees Association. On the professional level, Brauch became a
referee in the Major Indoor Soccer League, serving as an official at
Pittsburgh Spirit games at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh for a
number of years.
Of his coaching career, Brauch said: "I believe that my 25
competitive years of soccer at Beaver were devoted to teach many a
soccer athlete not so much to be soccer players, but to collect
their resources, to raise the bar of their physical and mental
abilities, to be courageous competitors in the game of life."
A United States Navy veteran, Brauch has a daughter, Julie, and son,
Jon, himself a former soccer standout at Beaver. Brauch has passed
his coaching genes on to his daughter, who is the head Track and
Field coach at Beaver, where Dad serves as one of her assistants.
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