It's hard to imagine how many hours coach Joe Colella has spent at the Hopewell High School baseball field, but let's try.

This year, the baseball season in the WPIAL officially began March 3. That was the first day teams were permitted to practice. The regular season is supposed to end, weather permitting, May 7. So, the season is a couple days more than nine weeks long.

Colella is notorious for long practices, but if his workouts were three hours, which is about as long as a high school game lasts, and Hopewell players are at the field six days a week, then Colella, on a normal week with a couple of home games, would log 18 hours at the field.

Now consider that he has been Hopewell's head coach since 1964, was an assistant coach at the school for four years before that and has managed the American Legion team in Hopewell, which he started, since 1964.

Also factor in that Hopewell is usually in the WPIAL playoffs (16 section titles) and in the Beaver County American Legion playoffs (15 county titles), which means additional games and practices.

Put it together and Colella, who declined to give his age, has probably spent as much time, if not more, on the Hopewell diamond as Joe Paterno has prowling Beaver Stadium and the practice fields at Penn State.

In fact, Colella, who is in his 44th season as Hopewell's head coach, has been running the Vikings' baseball program longer than Paterno has been calling the shots for football at Penn State. Paterno did not become head coach until 1966.

Colella, like Paterno, has no plans to step down as head coach.

"Whether I win 600 games or 1,000, I still feel motivated, and if I didn't, I wouldn't be here," said Colella, who won his 600th game at Hopewell with a 12-6 victory March 29 against New Brighton.

Add in his 916 victories in Legion ball, and he has more than 1,500 wins while wearing a uniform with Hopewell on it.

While there have been rumblings in the Beaver County community that Colella has lost it and that the game has passed him by, he is as feisty as ever.

He still coaches third base and still is passionate about the game.

"I can't ask the kids to go out and play hard and me be nonchalant about it," he said. "I come down here and give the best I possibly can because I enjoy it. If nobody appreciates it, I'm sorry."

Folks in the Hopewell community, which is just outside Aliquippa, showed their appreciation a few years a go by putting Colella's name on the high school field.

Hopewell (7-6 overall, 2-6) lost to Chartiers Valley, 9-2, last night in Section 3-AAA. The Vikings, who don't have a senior on the roster, have not been eliminated from qualifying for the postseason, but they need to win just about ever game to get there.

Colella said he had high expectations when the season began, but a couple key injuries have hurt.

"It hasn't been easy. You start to feel sorry for yourself, but I've had fewer injuries [over the years] than a lot of teams," he said. "But we'll keep fighting. If there's one out left in the last regular-season game and we're behind, I'll be fighting as hard as I can to keep going."

That no-quit attitude is one of the lessons Colella has tried to instill in his players over the years.

"There's no doubt about it, a lot of what he teaches you about baseball carries over to your life," said Ray Antonelli, who was the star pitcher when Hopewell won the WPIAL Class AAA title in 2000 and is now the pitching coach at Youngstown State University.

Under Colella, the Vikings also won a WPIAL championship in 1979 and a PIAA title in '86.

"We had practices that were pretty long, but that was because he loves the game and wanted to give everybody a chance," Antonelli said. "I don't think people really understood that."

Colella has also had an impact on other coaches. Blackhawk's Bob Amalia, who also coaches the high school and Legion teams in that community, has copied a lot of what he does from Colella.

"He's been a big influence on my style. I'd say 90 percent of the things we do I picked up by talking to him," Amalia said.

While he said players' attitudes have changed some -- "Before, I would ask a kid to cut his hair and he'd do it. Now a parent might call you and give you a rough time." -- Colella added that players are the same on the field as when he started coaching.

Of course, he said he has mellowed over the years.

"If I was the coach I was 30 years ago, I wouldn't have a team ... they'd all quit," said Colella. "When the day comes that I come down here and don't get the respect I deserve, I'll walk out and go home."

What has made Colella's teams so successful has been his attention to detail, the fact he usually has good pitching and his ability to adapt his style to his players' strengths.

"Anybody can have one good year, but show me a team that wins every year and you're doing a pretty good job," he said. "A guy can go out and bowl a 280 game, but let me see him do that after he goes out and bowls a few games first."

Until a couple years ago, Colella, who graduated from Rochester High School and played college ball at Geneva, didn't miss a practice or a game for the high school or Legion teams. He was slowed by kidney stones in the summer of 2005.

"Until then, I might have missed one game for a graduation or something," he said. "When I had those health problems, I missed more practices in one week than I did for 43 years."

In good health these days, he doesn't see himself retiring.

"I'm like Paterno in this regard," Colella said. "He said he doesn't fish or hunt. I don't hunt, fish or play golf. I don't have any hobbies ... I come here, to the field."