SRU COACH OF THE WEEK

In 1972 and 1973, George Mihalik led the Rock football team to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship as quarterback and won both games.

After winning those championships, Mihalik joined the staff and in 1988, he became the 15th coach in SRU history.

Now 23 years later, Mihalik has his name added to the stadium in the Green and White's home opener against Cheyney University, making it Mihalik-Thompson Stadium.

 Mihalik's best statistical seasons with SRU were from 1997-99 as he led the team through three straight unbeaten PSAC-West seasons and won the PSAC championship and made it to the national tournament each season.

In his 23 seasons as head coach, Mihalik has a 155-95-4 record and has started the 2011 season with a 2-0 record.

As a high school student at Bishop Carroll high school, Mihalik realized that he wanted to become a coach or a teacher as his career.

"When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher or a coach and made that my goal," Mihalik said.

After playing football at the university and winning two PSAC championships, Mihalik said that he couldn't have passed up the opportunity to come back and coach here.

"Anytime you have a chance to come back to your alma-mater, especially if you had an enjoyable time while you were there, it's something special," Mihalik said. "I wanted to come back because of the relationships that I had built here and since I was trying to make a name for myself as a coach, taking the job was a critical point in my career."

As he looked back at how his coaching career has played out so far, he said that the Rock's performance in the late 90's was at the top of his list of most memorable moments at SRU.

"When you look at good memories, they usually correlate with winning," Mihalik said. "We finished the season ranked No. 2 in 1999 and that was a great time in my coaching career."

One goal that Mihalik fell short of achieving with those strong teams in the late 90's was winning a championship, and that is something that he still strives for before he decides to retire.

"Winning a national championship is my main goal I want to achieve before I retire," Mihalik said. "We came close in '99 and that is the final memory that I want to get before I retire."

After the success in the late 90's, Mihalik said that he received several offers to move to bigger named universities and more high profile coaching jobs, but he ultimately decided to stay at SRU.

"I was given opportunities to move on but I wanted to stay because I wanted my daughters to have roots," Mihalik said. "I didn't want to get into a situation where I kept moving from one coaching job to another so I decided to stay here as the coach of Slippery Rock."

 In 1986, Mihalik received his doctorate degree from West Virginia University for safety management after receiving his bachelor and masters degrees from SRU.

"If I wouldn't have been a coach, I would have done something in the safety field," he said. "I would have worked in some type of business setting in the safety industry."

Besides being a head coach, Mihalik is also a professor of safety management at SRU and focuses on making that program successful and prominent at the university.

With the busy schedule of a professor and a coach, Mihalik likes to get away when he can and enjoys spending time with family, hunting, fishing and playing golf when he can.

"I try to enjoy time with my family when I can," Mihalik said. "The regular season and recruting are always busy times, so I try to find time to get away to my camp and relax. I love to hunt and fish while I'm up there and also get in a couple rounds of golf."