Former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Aaron Smith is set to be the next boys basketball coach at Eden Christian Academy, according to a Thursday afternoon report by Mike White of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Smith, 46, was originally selected by the Steelers in the fourth round of the 1999 NFL Draft out of Colorado. In his career with the Steelers from 1999-2011, Smith won two Super Bowls and was a Pro Bowl selection once in 2004.
After retiring from the NFL in 2012, Smith has served as an assistant football and basketball coach at North Allegheny.
Eden Christian, which is located in Ohio Township near Sewickley, PA, is a small private school and founded in 1983. It has only been participating in WPIAL athletics since 2011. The Warriors went 13-9 last season and 7-3 in conference play before ultimately losing in the second round of the WPIAL playoffs. After last season ended, head coach Todd Aiken resigned.
While he had a very nice professional career as a football player, Smith possesses an impressive basketball background as well, as he was an all-conference basketball player at Sierra High in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was reportedly a basketball-first athlete at a time when he said Sierra was certainly a football school. Previous stories indicate that Smith only went out for football in high school as a freshman because his friends did and he had nothing else to do.
Smith is now the second former Steelers player to join a WPIAL coaching staff this week, as former inside linebacker Vince Williams recently joined the football coaching staff at Pine-Richland to coach linebackers.
