When Joe Greco resigned as the New Brighton High School football coach following last season, he figured his days on the sidelines were not over.

He also figured he would take maybe a year off before looking into another coaching job.

Things don't often work out as folks plan. This time, it did.

Greco, who had coached at New Brighton for 22 years -- 12 as the head coach -- is moving into the college ranks. He has joined coach Jeff Hand's staff at Westminster College in New Wilmington this season.

"Through recruiting, you get to know a lot of [college] coaches," Greco said. "The position at Westminster came open and Jeff asked if I was interested and I said I was."

He will work with the wide receivers and be responsible for recruiting in the Beaver County area. Westminster is a Division III program that plays in the Presidents' Athletic Conference.

Greco, who compiled a 68-52 record with the Lions and was the Midwestern Athletic Conference coach of the year in 1995 and 2001, is looking forward to the new challenge. New Brighton finished 4-5 last season.

"It's going to be a new situation for me," he said. "Twenty-two years is a long time to coach in one school. I really think I just needed a change."

He will continue to teach in the middle school in New Brighton and said getting to practices at Westminster, in northern Lawrence County, shouldn't be a problem.

"The drive is only about 35 minutes, pretty easy," he said before practices started. "I've already been up there for some meetings and things. I don't see that as a problem."

Westminster opened training camp a week ago, but Greco had been instructing football players before that. His son, Gabe, is on the mighty-mite team in the New Brighton youth program and dad had been helping out at workouts.

The lone conflict Greco envisions with coaching at Westminster is getting back to New Brighton in time on Saturdays to watch his son play. Mighty-mite games usually start at 5:30 p.m. Westminster home games usually begin at 1:30.

"It's going to be close and I'm going to have to hurry after games, but I should be able to make it," he said. "Even the away games are pretty close, so it shouldn't be a real problem for me. I guess I'm going to be putting miles on the old Honda, though."

The idea of recruiting in Beaver County also appealed to Greco, especially because he knows most of the area coaches and probably would head out to a game on a Friday night anyway.

After he resigned at New Brighton, Greco received a number of phone calls from area high school coaches wondering if he would be interested in joining their staffs. He didn't want to coach against New Brighton in the Class AA Midwestern Athletic Conference.

"I know those guys and I didn't resign because of the players," he said. "That would have been tough for me and that's why I was going to wait and see what opportunities were out there.

"But then this came along and it was just the right situation for me."