Popovich steps down as Legion baseball Region 6 director
Mitchell Kendra
Ron Popovich felt like it was time to move on.
The Albert Gallatin graduate and former Colonials head coach has relinquished the position he’s held the last 16 years as Pennsylvania American Legion Baseball’s Region 6 director.
“Sixteen years is a long time and honestly it just felt like the right moment to step down,” Popovich said.
He still wants to be involved in the sport in some capacity.
“I love baseball too much to be stepping away from it all,” said Popovich, a former star catcher with the Colonials.
Popovich, who oversaw the annual regional tournament that included teams from the Fayette American Legion league, recalled when he accepted the job not long after giving up his spot as Uniontown’s Legion manager.
“When I was stepping down from being the coach at Uniontown Legion, the state people approached me about the job,” Popovich said. “We must’ve went back and forth for months because I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved in that. A lot of work goes into it.
“In the end, they were really encouraging me to do it, so I said, Ok. The only stipulation I had is that if I get back into coaching would they still allow me to keep the Region 6 job? They were going to allow that, but I never did get back into Legion coaching.”
Popovich would like to coach at the high school level again. He was an assistant at Laurel Highlands and Albert Gallatin before accepting the head coaching job at AG in 2017 and holding it until 2023.
“I’d like to be a high school head coach again,” Popovich said. “I’m definitely interested in that in the near future.”
In looking back on his reign as Legion regional director, Popovich went back to the beginning in 2015 to come up with the most memorable season.
“There were a lot of great games and individual performances at the regionals, but the one year that sticks in my mind the most occurred actually the first year I became regional director,” Popovich said. “My stepson Brad Yohman took over the Uniontown Legion team. The regionals were at Shaler, eight teams, and Uniontown lost a really tough first game.”
Uniontown gave up six runs in the bottom of the ninth inning in falling to host Shaler in walk-off fashion. Most teams would be hard-pressed to recover from such a devastating loss, but Yohman’s squad did just that.
“Then they came back and wound up winning the whole tournament,” Popovich pointed out. “That, to me, was incredible because it’s so tough when you lose that first game, especially the heart-breaking way they did, and then you’ve got to fight through the losers’ bracket.
“That stuck out, just that it was Uniontown and it was Brad Yohman. It’s never happened since then. It was his first year and he took over on short notice for Scott DeBerry. There have been other great moments but that one, during my time as director, stuck out the most.”
Yohman’s team was prominent during Popovich’s time as director, winning seven consecutive Fayette titles at one point, including three regional championships.
“Now I’m transitioning from Legion, hopefully back into high school,” Popovich said. “But I’ll just wait and see on that for now.”