To think they were once a power in Western Pennsylvania
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My high school Alma Mater has really fallen on hard times
- Thread starter ERICCARTMAN
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Wasn't Butler SD the largest in the state at one time? I heard that RT 68 is going to go to 4 lanes + a turning lane which would open up Butler to the southern part of the county.
This is what I’ll never understand. The kids in Butler are not markedly any different than kids anywhere else. With that size of enrollment, they should be competitive. If not every year then at least every few years.
But how their football program can be mercy ruled by schools who get mercy ruled by other schools is absolutely baffling and shows how far away they really are from competing.
What's you're take? Not hiring coaches that are interested in running a program? Poor youth football? Other sports? I was curious that the blame was on the "culture". Makes me think there's a lot more to the story.
When year-round football in WPA caught up with the trends of southern scholastic football, maybe the more financially healthy schools surpassed the traditional but less financially healthy S.D.s? My hometown S.D. was very good for 60 years, producing college AA's and NFL players. By 1990, it was a once per decade event to go .500. We didn't have 7on7 teams and off-season camps. Kids who were serious went to other districts. Oddly enough, we became elite in hockey which we started offering only in 1993'. Now we can't find 40 kids to play fb while bordering rural schools with one fourth the enrollment have 40-50.
Their football program is broken from top to bottom. They will never have a good high school team until they fix the feeder system. It's gotten really bad and they don't care enough to fix it.
Doesn't make much sense. Look at even Ford City to the east, that program went from the doldrums to being a top tier AA school for about a decade. Combined with Kittanning and Armstrong has at least been respectable in the upper division. Similar areas, similar kids, but Butler has a much larger pool to pick from. Really doesn't make sense how terrible they've been
It comes down to how important football is in certain areas. Butler kids and parents obviously dont put a high value on football. Some communities emphasize different sports.
It seems as though the good athletes in Butler focus on basketball, or other sports. My older son was playing pickup ball against kids from Butler, and there were 2 kids that would have been good football players but one of them transferred out and the other kid did not play football. The big kid that transferred was about 6-4 280 and moved very well for a big man. The other one was their starting C/F last year in basketball. He was about 6-2 and very athletic. He would have been a good Safety or LB.
Especially considering neighbor schools like Knoch and Seneca Valley are fairly competitive. Butler is still one of the bigger schools, a real head scratcher.
My opinion? They are the perfect example of not having enough affluent kids who's parents don't allow them to fail and not having enough African Americans. They have some farm, but just mostly a motley crew up there. Weird.
Obviously there is a culture thing, Sam Alberts who won every he coached (Valley, Highlands, Freeport, couldn't win at Butler). I would have to think they must also have lousy feeder programs. Some of these schools that just produce talent have an excellent and in synch midget and junior high programs.
Wow...I just posted this on a guess that this is a problem.
Yes, one of the differences now is that kids like Ethan Morton or Robbie Carmody if this was 1985, are definitely playing QB for their respective HS teams. The specialization is one thing, obviously Morton going to Purdue made the right choice but more and more kids aren't putting up with football.
My friend's grandson is a 6-2 stud that goes 210 and can lift a house.He played ....lacrosse then got a job,I bet the football people turned when he walked by them,and hes such a damn nice kid
Perhaps Butler is going the ND route and will now get their own network deal.
I remember my alma mater (Gateway) played Butler in the playoffs circa 1985, I think it was Butler's coach Bernardi? last game as he retired. Previous year we played New Castle. I believe both of these programs haven't been heard from since. Could be a regional focus on other sports??? Maybe the hex of route 422? I dunno.
New Castle is still strong just way smaller now than back then. I beleive they are 4A now.
New Castle just played in the 4A title game a few years ago and generally is pretty decent (playoff level team).
New Castle’s decline from the 80’s and prior high level success has more to do with declining enrollment/ population in the area. They aren’t really anything like Butler and probably 1/3 their enrollment.
New Castle currently has an Alum at: Ohio St, an All Big 10 player at Iowa, and a former 1st round starry safety at Indy Colts. Butler has Kradle at Pitt and nothing else close to NC.
IMO, the “coaching coordinator” will be the most important addition for the program. Need to have that continuity from the youth level through high school. I think ideally the high school head coach would be more in charge of that role and implement what he sees fit at the youth level, but it’s a start.
Yea, maybe, they are a big school. AG is smaller so had to settle for CBS Sports Network like Army.
There is a big meeting next week to discuss alignments for next year. They are considering SMF's proposal of just basing the conferences off of geography regardless of class (but teams from 3 different classes cant be in 1 conference). This makes the most sense. They would still have 6 classes for playoffs which I think is the right thing. It would be controversial to pick and choose the playoff teams since you might have a big southern school run through lower classification teams and a big northern school go 4-5 playing against upper classification teams but oh well.
Yeah, it was all your idea. The fact that other districts have been doing it for decades means nothing. The fact that people started talking about doing it from before the PIAA even went to six classes means nothing. It was all your idea.
It's all about the money. North Allegheny and Pine-Richland aren't dominant by accident.
And South Fayette. They still have room to grow, too. I’ll be interested to see how they fare against Pine-Richland in 2020. Crazy that they’re both 5A now.
Why does money, make a kid a good football player? Aliquippa, Farrell are not rich?
Farrell has an excellent youth through High School program. Commitment throughout! Plus the kids buy-in and are hungry for success.
Success drives success.
The town of Farrell supports the football and all programs so it is very well supported in the community.
Success drives success.
The town of Farrell supports the football and all programs so it is very well supported in the community.
I think the right coach can make a difference, but only so much. I remember back in the day, Baldwin said the same types of things -- we have good kids, just as good as the schools we play, but for no good reason they are consistently beating us, etc. So Baldwin hired Don Yanessa from Aliquippa and made him the highest paid high school coach in the country (https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1989-06-28-8906280480-story.html). He did a nice job and became Baldwin's all time winningest coach and had competitive teams, but it's not as if he turned them into a WPIAL title contender. He won only one conference title in 14 years at Baldwin.
Pine Richland was never dominant until they hired Kasper. Money is a lazy excuse.
There's a lot more than money that goes into a successful football program, and there are countless examples that prove this.
Money + parental involvement. It's no accident that schools with solid sports programs have concerned, involved parents at the youth level who are the driving force in making it happen. Of course, money makes the process smoother and is the grease that lubricates the machine and provides the better facilities.
People often re-live their own lives thru their kids. They want to be winners, so they want their children to be winners, too.
Not true. They were good under Clair Altemus too.... Remember they went to the State finals under him
Pine Richland got good when they transformed "Richland" (aka Deer Lakes West) to Pine-Richland (aka North Allegheny Lite) and grew from a AA cow school to a AAAAAA rich suburb.
They were OK, nothing like they are now. Altemus had some good years in 3A. That was the 2003 team with Neil Walker that went to Hershey. Altimus was 18-30 after they moved up to 4A.
Kasper took over in 2013. He's 74-18, won 3 WPIALs(played in 4 championship games), won one state title and played in another. He's turned them into a powerhouse.
NA, PR, Mars ... these teams all have great youth programs with knowledgeable people who are able to teach their children the proper way to play/compete. Couple that with talented kids, and that's why they win.
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Yeah. That's the only correct answer. If you don't have a coach that is involved with the younger kids and don't create some kind of tradition, you end up with apathy. TJ is so good because there is leadership that gets kids into the weight room and to off season workouts. After a while, the kids feed on it and it becomes an expectation. They've become elite.
I read Butler now has 18 sports, maybe kids are doing soccer or lacrosse instead of football, I don't know.
Look at where I grew up. Har-Brack was Harrison Township and Brackenridge together and they produced three players in the ‘50s that made it into professional football:
Cookie Gilchrist – Member of the All-Time AFL team, 4x AFL All-Star, Buffalo Bills Wall of Fame, AFL’s first 1,000-yard rusher, led the AFL in rushing twice, AFL MVP 1962, set single game rushing record with 243 yards against the NY Jets
Dick Modzelewski – 2x All-American at Maryland, Outland trophy winner, CFB HOF member, set NFL record with 180 consecutive games played
Ed Modzelewski – All-American at Maryland, Sugar Bowl MVP, 1st round draft pick of the Steelers and sixth overall pick in the NFL draft.
In the '60s, the district has expanded to become Highlands adding Fawn Township and Tarentum and thus you have a larger population to draw from for athletics. Since then, if I’m not mistaken the only player to do anything of significance at the Division-I level has been Matt Bonislawski at UConn and he played quarterback when they moved their football program to Division I. There is a kid now at Highlands that’s walking-on to play at Penn State this coming year but other than that, I don't know of anyone else.
They became a bigger school district with a larger enrollment, and no one has come close to reaching the NFL let alone do much at the Division I level.
Cookie Gilchrist – Member of the All-Time AFL team, 4x AFL All-Star, Buffalo Bills Wall of Fame, AFL’s first 1,000-yard rusher, led the AFL in rushing twice, AFL MVP 1962, set single game rushing record with 243 yards against the NY Jets
Dick Modzelewski – 2x All-American at Maryland, Outland trophy winner, CFB HOF member, set NFL record with 180 consecutive games played
Ed Modzelewski – All-American at Maryland, Sugar Bowl MVP, 1st round draft pick of the Steelers and sixth overall pick in the NFL draft.
In the '60s, the district has expanded to become Highlands adding Fawn Township and Tarentum and thus you have a larger population to draw from for athletics. Since then, if I’m not mistaken the only player to do anything of significance at the Division-I level has been Matt Bonislawski at UConn and he played quarterback when they moved their football program to Division I. There is a kid now at Highlands that’s walking-on to play at Penn State this coming year but other than that, I don't know of anyone else.
They became a bigger school district with a larger enrollment, and no one has come close to reaching the NFL let alone do much at the Division I level.
Hetrick - played at Pitt awhile ago
Stroud - played at ND
Pawlak - basketball at Duquesne
