With family roots in Natrona Heights, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni grew up fan of Pittsburgh sports

Amy Sirianni was Amy Wladyka when she was growing up in the 1950s on 10th Avenue in Harrison. Across the street was the old Riverview Elementary School in Natrona Heights. A few blocks south was the grocery store her uncles owned, Ted & Leo’s Market. Her sons warmly recall the basketball court and areas for playing catch within walking distance when they came back to visit their mother’s childhood home.

But a case could be made that the nearby address most referenced in Natrona Heights during Sirianni’s childhood was a single-family home a couple blocks away.

“The Modzelewskis,” Sirianni said by phone this week. “They lived on Eighth Avenue. That was always a big name — the name that was thrown out in the family.”

Ed and Dick Modzelewski were stars in three sports at old Har-Brack High School, and by the mid-1950s were each amidst long NFL careers.

“ ‘Big Mo’ and ‘Little Mo,’ they all played professional football,” Sirianni said, speaking in the reverential tone many in Natrona Heights must have to her when she was a little girl. “That was always a name that was kind of cherished, I guess, you would have to say in our neighborhood.”

Nowadays, Sirianni is a name that could be building up some similar stature in Jamestown, N.Y., and across eastern Pennsylvania.

Amy and Fran Sirianni’s third son? He’s now a head coach … in professional football.

Nick Sirianni is in his second season in charge of the Philadelphia Eagles, the NFL’s lone remaining undefeated team headed into Sunday’s 1 p.m. home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“It’s kind of surreal sometimes,” Amy Sirianni said. “I look back, or I am at the games and I look down at the sidelines and I see all my sons (coaching) and I am thinking, ‘Whoa.’

“It’s really kind of sometimes unbelievable because I was brought up in an area, Natrona Heights, where football was really big. When I was growing up, you always went to games. Even if you didn’t have any (family members) playing, you went to the games. So it was always big. And then when we went to Clarion (for college), that’s where I met my husband, and it was always big in Clarion, too.

“But to be the national (pro) level? I just never thought that something like that could happen.”

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After Amy graduated from what was then Clarion State College in 1970, she and Fran got married and settled in Jamestown, N.Y.

Fran, a native of Kane, Pa., had finished his college career as a four-year starter at defensive back in 1968 — it was decorated enough, he’d ultimately be inducted into Clarion’s Sports Hall of Fame — and would go on to teach and coach multiple sports for more than four decades.

Sons Mike, Jay and Nick were raised watching Dad coach at Southwestern Central High School.

“When other kids were going home, we would go to football practice and dive over the tackling dummies, Walter Payton-style,” Mike Sirianni said by phone. “That’s where we would go, we would hang out at practice all the time.”

All three of the Sirianni boys would follow their father into coaching — and all three would have great success after each had a championship-winning playing career at NCAA Division III Mount Union.

Mike has won more than 80% of the games he has coached over a 20-year career at NCAA Division III powerhouse Washington & Jefferson. Jay won 101 games and two New York state championships over 12 seasons as coach at Southwestern High School.

And, youngest son Nick worked his way from college to NFL assistant to being named a head coach at age 39 in January 2021.

“Nick, to his credit, he took some chances in his coaching career and put himself out there, and he kept moving up,” Mike Sirianni said. “That’s all to his credit.

“Believe me, when people say, ‘Look at your brother,’ I’m like, ‘That guy — my brother — the head coach of an NFL team?’ It’s still surreal to me.”

Though they grew up in Western New York, the Sirianni boys’ love of sports can be traced to Western Pennsylvania.

During a conference call with Pittsburgh media this week, Nick affectionately recalled trips back to Grandma’s house on 10th Avenue in Natrona Heights. Annual late-summer family reunions were held at Harrison Hills Park, off Freeport Road, in another part of Harrison.

The Sirianni boys enjoyed seeing Grandma and Grandpa (Mike Wladyka and the former Celia Wloczewski) and aunts and uncles, and surely spent time playing with cousins.

But what they most looked forward to about their family trips to Western Pennsylvania was what they would do the day after the reunion.

“One of our favorite things to do after the family reunion … was to go to a Pirates game,” Nick Sirianni said. “So I definitely grew up a Pirates, Penguins, Steelers fan. I have some great memories of that, most of them of the Pirates.”

To prove it, Sirianni proudly — and unsolicited — reeled off names from the early 1990s Pirates teams that won three consecutive National League East titles, the most recent division championships for the franchise.

“I was Barry Bonds fan, a huge Bobby Bonilla fan, huge Andy Van Slyke fan, Doug Drabek, Mike LaValliere, Jose Lind … John Smiley, (Tim) Wakefield.”

Nick remembers being only a couple of years out of college and in his first job as defensive backs coach at alma mater Mount Union when he made the precarious decision to drive back home on a snowy early-February day to make sure he could spend it with his family watching Super Bowl XL.

“It’s a really cool memory,” Nick said. “I came home in a snowstorm to watch (the Steelers win the Super Bowl) with my dad and my brothers.

“I love Pittsburgh. It’s a great city. Just spent so much time there.”

And — aside perhaps from Three Rivers Stadium during Pirates games — most of that time spent and memories made in the area were in Natrona Heights with his mother’s side of the family.

“That was a fun time, man,” Mike Sirianni said, remembering what during his visits was a Highlands School District administration building but formerly was the old Riverview Elementary where his mother went. It’s now a newly opened senior living center.

“I remember going over and throwing the baseball against the wall,” Mike said, “There’s a basketball hoop there. I mean, literally, you could walk to the Highlands (High School) track from there and their stadium.

“I can still picture it.”

Some cousins are all that remains of Amy’s Wladyka family in the Alle-Kiski Valley, spread out among Freeport and Lower Burrell and Natrona Heights. But the old house on 10th Avenue is still there, where she grew up and where her sons would develop part of their lifelong love of sports that launched successful coaching careers.

Including a career that led one to be the head coach of an NFL team facing the Steelers on Sunday.

Mike Siriani is brought to the area, on occasion, for recruiting. When he is in town, he makes sure he drives down 10th Avenue and takes a picture to send to his mother and aunts and uncles.

“The people who bought it have kept it up,” Amy said, “which is nice.”

Amy’s father would give football and baseball cards to his grandsons. Like his son-in-law, John Wladyka passed his love of the Steelers and Pirates onto the Sirianni boys — the youngest of which is coaching against his former beloved football team Sunday.

“The boys’ father (Fran), he was always a big Pittsburgh fan,” Amy said. “But our allegiance has changed. We are big Philly fans now.”

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