Pettine honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

Former Browns coach and four others inducted into Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame

because I view myself as an extension of that. It’s a great honor to have what he did and what he was able to help me do be recognized again, especially at home. I’ve been a lot of places, but I’ve always been drawn back to the Philadelphia area.”

Pettine had a long coaching journey with many stops.

Before coaching, however, the Doylestown native starred at Central Bucks West. He played under his legendary dad, the late Mike Pettine Sr., and earned all state honors as a quarterback and defensive back. He went on to play college ball as a free safety at the University of Virginia. He graduated in 1988 and shortly after started his coaching career.

The 51-year old served as an assistant to his father at CB West and a graduate assistant at the University of Pittsburgh before getting his first head coaching job.

“I learned so much about football from (my dad), but when you coach for him or when you play for him, unknowingly you’re being imprinted with such a great set of life skills,” Pettine said. “There are a lot of players that will never play another down after they played for him and still what they were left with — the successful habits that they had — it’s a life skills thing. That’s one of the things that makes him most proud. Obviously he had a lot of records and the numbers were great, but nothing made him more proud than when a former player came back into town and they had become a judge or a lawyer or a doctor and became a success in whatever field they chose to pursue.”

Pettine took over as head coach at William Tennent High School in 1995 and North Penn in 1997.

He got his first NFL job as an assistant with the Baltimore Ravens

GENE WALSH — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA President Dale Hood poses with Hall of Fame Inductees L-R Jim Donofrio, Will Lapp, Cathy Miller, Tom Lonergan and 1st Vice President Jim Serratore at the Montco Coaches Hall of Fame.