18 · SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2017 FROM THE SERVICE TO THE SIDELINES As a serviceman in the Navy during the Vietnam War, Wayne Capra traveled the globe. As a high school soccer coach, Capra won four WPIAL titles teaching the global game. Capra, 70, led the girls soccer programs at Upper St. Clair and South Fayette over a 22-year career as a head coach. Shortly after the end of last season — which ended with another WPIAL quarterfinal appearance for South Fayette — the veteran coach decided to bring an end to his time on the sidelines. Soccer was always around for Capra, who grew up in the South Hills mining commu-nity of Coverdale, part of present-day Bethel Park. In those days, the mining companies were at the center of town life, with the company operating the town’s store, church and usually owning the houses where their miners lived. The immigrant-heavy communities bonded in another way, with company-run soccer teams that played in what was known as the Miners League and later in the competitive Keystone League. “I grew up in a coal mining patch, and all of our dads were from overseas. My dad was Italian and spoke broken English, but the thing everybody had in common was football … soccer,” Capra said. “Every Sunday after church, everybody went to the field and played soccer. My dad played, and when I got old enough, I started to play for Coverdale. There was a team in Beadling, which still ex-ists, and teams in Heidelberg, Castle Shannon … every town had a team.” Capra’s playing days were halted shortly after graduating from Bethel Park when he left to join the Navy on New Year’s Day, 1966. After beginning at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, Capra received an assignment that would impact the rest of his life. Selected to study electronics and aviation, Capra was sent to Memphis, Tenn., for 26 weeks of training in aeronautics and theory of flight — “All the things you should’ve learned in high school but weren’t paying attention,” Capra said, with a laugh. After training, Capra was assigned to Navy Patrol Squadron 44 out of Patuxent River, Md., and that’s when the global touring began. “Our primary objective was anti-submarine warfare, so my job initially was to help find Russian submarines,” Capra said. Capra toured the Atlantic and Mediterra-nean from Norway to Greenland, Ireland to Italy and on the islands of the Azores, where he was part of the search for the sunken sub-marine USS Scorpion. Later, he would shift to the Pacific and be part of both sea air rescue missions and Op-eration Market Time, which flew South China Sea patrols out of the Philippines to disrupt the flow of supplies and troops for the North Vietnamese. Capra was discharged as a 2nd-class petty officer in October 1969. Shortly after return-ing home, his experience in electronics al-lowed him to begin a 38-year career with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad that would end with his retirement from CSX in 2008. At that point, getting back into soccer wasn’t on Capra’s mind, but after starting a SUBMITTED PHOTOS family of his own, he was pulled back into the sport. “My oldest daughter was critically burned when she was young, and she wouldn’t talk for a while,” Capra said. “One day, we were going by the fields on McLaughlin Run Road, and all the youth teams were out there in their different color uniforms. She said, ‘Daddy, can I do that?’ … So we got her play-ing, and they found out I knew something, so I got involved with Upper St. Clair travel soccer.” That first step into coaching led to many more. Capra began assisting his friend Ron Wilcher, who was the boys coach at Mt. Lebanon, and he also began coaching with Beadling, the one-time mining team that had since expanded into Western Pennsylvania’s most decorated youth soccer club. Capra took over the girls program at Upper St. Clair in 1995, and his teams won four WPIAL titles from 1998-2002 before he took over the South Fayette program in 2005. “He’s probably one of the nicest gentlemen you’d ever want to meet, and he always had the best interest of all his players at heart,” Beadling president Denny Kohlmyer said. “He was always someone I could bounce ideas off if I needed to. I have a lot of respect for him as a coach but even more as a person.” Capra said the values he most wanted to convey to his players were respect, prepara-tion and teamwork — things that served him well in the military, on the soccer field and in his career. “I think the thing that translated for (Capra) over the years was the work ethic, that nothing ever comes easy,” Kohlmyer said. “Too many people today believe in entitle-ment — not just kids, but adults, too. He taught the value of hard work.” Though Capra is stepping back from coach-ing, he said he is entertaining the thought of applying to be on the WPIAL’s soccer com-mittee, and he hopes to find other ways to remain involved. “(Coaching) definitely helped me. You get out on the field, get some exercise and being around young people makes a difference,” Capra said. “It wasn’t about winning and losing to me, it was about being involved with young people and giving to them what I had gleaned through my life, and I learned from them, too. I always enjoyed it when, 15 years later, you have a young person come back and say thanks for what you did. I think I gained as much out of it as they did.” Retiring coach Capra is a 4-time WPIAL champ, veteran of Navy during Vietnam Wayne Capra (left) spent the past 22 seasons as a head coach at Upper St. Clair and South Fayette high schools before stepping down last November after the season ended. A Navy veteran and Bethel Park native, Capra won four WPIAL championships in a five-year span during his tenure at Upper St. Clair. BY MATT GRUBBA SERVICE SALUTE Capra served nearly four years in the Navy, working on such varied missions as searching for the sunken submarine USS Scorpion in the Atlantic and helping to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines in the South China Sea.
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