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They teach them how to work when they are tired.
They teach discipline, preparation and accountability.
The lessons can remain long after players forget the score of a particular game.
For Pierro, 31 football seasons provided thousands of opportunities to teach those lessons.
There were countless practices that never appeared in a newspaper.
There were early arrivals and late evenings.
There were film sessions, difficult losses and celebrations after victories.
There were conversations with athletes who needed encouragement.
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Those ordinary moments are where much of a coach’s real legacy is built.
The public often sees coaches standing on the sidelines during games. Players see everything that happens before those games. They see the hours of preparation and the attention to details spectators never notice.
Pierro gave Steubenville decades of those unseen hours.
That is why news of his death traveled through the community with such force.
This was not simply the death of a retired school employee.
It was the loss of someone woven into the identity of a football program.
The circumstances made the news even more shocking.
Pierro was not involved in a football collision or traveling to a game.
He was at home mowing his lawn.
It was the kind of routine chore performed countless times without a second thought.
Then lightning struck.
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There was no long period for the community to prepare itself.
There was no extended goodbye.
One moment Pierro was beginning retirement, and the next his family and friends were confronting a permanent loss.
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Lightning deaths are relatively rare, which can make them feel especially difficult to process when they occur. People hear thunder and see lightning during storms every year, but most never personally know someone whose life ends because of a strike. For Pierro’s family, that rare danger suddenly became devastatingly real.
Reports identified his death as the first lightning-related fatality in Ohio that year.
Across the United States, it was reportedly the 14th.
Statistics can help people understand how uncommon an event is, but they do little to explain its human impact.
To Pierro’s loved ones, he was not number 14.
To Steubenville players, he was not a statistic.
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He was Coach Pierro.
And only hours after his death, the community had to walk into one of the places most strongly associated with him: a Friday night football game.
The timing could hardly have been more emotional.
Football games are normally occasions for excitement, competition and school pride. On that Friday, however, Steubenville entered the game carrying the shock of losing someone who had devoted 31 years to the program.
The school dedicated the game to Pierro.
Players stepped onto the field knowing that the man they were honoring had died only hours earlier.
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Then they played.