Few individuals have made a more positive mark on the city of Weirton, West Virginia, than George Vargo. Born and raised in West Virginia, the 1970 Weirton Madonna graduate began coaching high school basketball in the Ohio Valley in the mid-1980s, when Wintersville High School coach Mel Coleman offered him a positon coaching the Wintersville JV boys team. Within a few years, Vago had taken over as Weir High School’s girls basketball coach, and by 1995 became the head boys basketball coach at his alma mater.
Under Vargo’s guidance, the Dons dominated the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference, winning six championships between 1995 and 2012. In 2011, Madonna won a West Virginia Class A State Championship, an accomplishment Vargo cites as his top achievement in his 21-year run with the Dons. Before leaving Madonna to coach the Franciscan University men’s basketball team in 2017, he compiled more than 300 wins and sent 66 student-athletes to OVAC all-conference teams.
Vargo also spent—and continues to spend, a significant amount of time with the Weirton community, where he has served as executive director of the housing authority for more than 40 years.
“I’ve always tried to make Weirton a better community, providing housing for our senior citizens, people with disabilities, and our low-income families,” he says. “That’s what life is about—trying to help people who need help. I’ve been in a position as a professional to be able to do that, and I feel good about our community, that we’ve been able to help a lot of people over the years.”
Inducted into the Weirton Madonna Hall of Fame in 2016, he and his wife, Charlotte, are the parents to three children and four grandchildren.
