Ultra-successful high school soccer coach David DiPiazza left Oak Mountain because he saw one more mountain to climb.

The 49-year-old was hired as the new head boys soccer coach at Vestavia Hills on Tuesday, less than a month after he had led Oak Mountain to a runner-up finish in the Class 7A state playoffs. The Eagles lost 2-1 to Montgomery Academy, snapping a 60-game unbeaten streak and ending a run of 49 consecutive wins. Oak Mountain finished 30-1 after winning the 2024 state title with a 29-0-1 record.

“Honestly, I wasn’t really looking to change,” DiPiazza said on Wednesday, taking a break from a youth soccer camp where he was being assisted by 22 of his now-former Oak Mountain players. “Laura Casey, the new athletic director at Vestavia, gave me a call a couple weeks ago. She said they had a position open and asked if I would be interested.

“Growing up and playing soccer in Birmingham my whole life and coaching in Birmingham, I saw the enormous potential that Vestavia Hills has. It’s also an incredible school academically. It’s one of those schools where if somebody asks you about it, you have to look at it and pay attention.

“I talked to Mrs. Casey and her enthusiasm was overwhelming,” the coach said. “She’s a Vestavia graduate and the community feeling they have there is great, similar to what we had at Oak Mountain.”

DiPiazza is replacing Leo Harlan, who led the Rebels to two Alabama High School Athletic Association final fours in 10 seasons with a runner-up finish in 2018. Harlan’s 2025 team finished 9-11-3 after a 17-6-3 slate in 2024 and a 14-12-2 mark in 2023, according to scorebord.com.

Harlan was the second head coach ever at Vestavia Hills after he served as an assistant there to the AHSAA’s all-time winningest coach, Rick Grammer. In 35 seasons, Grammer compiled a 633-158-50 record. An Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame inductee in the Class of 2020, Grammer retired in 2015.

DiPiazza, a John Carroll Catholic and Birmingham-Southern College graduate, said the decision to leave for an Area 6 rival was not easy.

“My wife told me, ‘If you weren’t sad about leaving and seeing how hard this is, it just means what a great experience you had,’” he said. “I didn’t take this lightly at all. People think I’m nuts, but I think we – my staff and I – have done a great job here. The way my parents and my coaches taught me was to leave a place better than you found it. We had a lot of rebuilding to do here and I think we did it.”

He spent nine seasons in two stints at Oak Mountain. DiPiazza coached the girls in 2015-16 before going to Birmingham-Southern to coach the women’s team. He came back to Oak Mountain to coach the boys in 2019 and won a title in 2024.

DiPiazza has won state championships at every stop in the AHSAA. He led the John Carroll boys to titles in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012. He won a girls championship at John Carroll in 2014 and another girls crown at Oak Mountain in 2015. His 2024 Oak Mountain boys were also state champs. His five boys championships rank second in the AHSAA to Jamie Ferguson of Bayside Academy and Joe Carter at John Carroll, who have six apiece. Brigid Meadow, who is now DiPiazza’s counterpart on the girls side at Vestavia Hills, is tied with Tommy Guice of Fort Payne with six state titles.

DiPiazza has 547 combined high school career wins in 25 seasons with a 547-142-58 overall record. He was 56-23-5 as the girls coach at John Carroll and 47-7-2 with the Oak Mountain girls. His Oak Mountain boys’ tally is 134-29-17 and he was 310-83-34 at John Caroll. DiPiazza has won 77.1 percent of the games he’s coached.

The coach also led Oak Mountain’s boys to four straight final four appearances. The 2025 Eagles were ranked No. 1 in the nation in the latest MaxPreps rankings, even after the setback against Montgomery Academy.

“The biggest thing is it’s just a new challenge,” DiPiazza said. “Ten years ago when I was at John Carroll and Grammer left, I thought that would be an interesting place to work.

“Something that was so amazing at Oak Mountain and John Carroll was getting the parents, the kids and the community to buy in. To be a championship program on a consistent basis, you have to have people buy in. You don’t win championships without working your tails off.

“I’m going to expect our kids to do well academically at an academically challenging school,” he said. “They are going to have to watch film and understand our scouting reports like, I don’t know, they might not have had to do before.

“To get the families to buy in, the players to buy in, they have to know that I’ve bought in to be successful. I spend hours doing scouting reports, getting practice set up and that’s the way you should be as the guy at the top. I’m going to demand a lot, but I’m going to work hard.”

DiPiazza said he believes his success as a program builder will pay off at Vestavia Hills, where Grammer led the Rebels to four state championships – the last coming back-to-back in 2013 and 2014.

“I have a plan and I’m good at establishing the kind of culture needed to be successful,” he said. “I believe if we put it all together, we can have a really dominating program.

“At John Hunt Park (in Huntsville, the site of the AHSAA championships), there are trees just beyond the field where the fans wait for the team after the game,” DiPiazza said. “My favorite memory is watching kids holding the trophy there with their family, their girlfriends. I experienced something like that in 1994 as a player. As a coach, the experience isn’t for you, it’s for your kids. I want these Vestavia kids to experience that – take pictures in the trees at John Hunt Park and sing and dance on the bus on the way back home.

“I want to do it the right way. I want them to represent their parents well and hopefully leave the program better human beings than they were when they came in. I want them to be good husbands, good citizens, good businessmen.”