BUTLER TWP — Forget about scoring. Cody Reep wasn't sure if he could skate.

Turns out the Butler eighth-grader is pretty good at both.

Reep led the Butler Middle School hockey team with 34 goals and all of PIHL middle school hockey with 47 points this season. He scored 14 goals to lead the team last year — the first year he ever put on a pair of skates.

“Cody's been playing dek hockey since he was 3,” his mother, Kelly Reep, said. “He always wanted to play on ice, but that was always a money issue with us.

“We finally let him go to an open skate last year, just to see if he could skate. He got on the ice and just took off.”

His hockey career has done the same.

Reep has quickly turned into a prolific and consistent goal scorer. He scored seven hat tricks this season, including each of his last three games.

“A friend of mine from dek hockey was going to open skate last year and asked if I wanted to go with him,” Reep said. “He was going out for his (Armstrong) middle school hockey team, so I figured I'd do the same thing here.”

Reep has scored at least two goals in each of his last eight games and found the net at least once in all 14 of Butler's games this season. He had an assist in the lone game he didn't register a goal.

He said he's not all that surprised by his sudden success.

“I've worked toward this. I prepared for it,” Reep said. “I scored a lot of goals in dek hockey every year. That's where my shot came from.

“If I wasn't scoring goals, it would seem weird. I just always have.”

Reep could be scoring still more goals.

“His numbers are through the roof anyway, but they would really be through the roof if we let him play forward all the time,” Butler Middle School coach Eric Lindey said. “If we'd get a big lead on teams, we'd drop Cody back to play defense.

“I can't begin to guess how many goals he would have scored if we let him play up front all the time.”

Lindey said Reep is “just a natural athlete” and believes that has led to his lofty numbers in the goal-scoring column.

“I've seen him take some slap shots, but his signature move is his wrist shot,” the coach said. “He snaps it off pretty good and it moves.

“He scored on a wrist shot from the blue line in one game this year ... just sailed it right past the goalie.”

Reep already stands six feet tall — “bigger than me,” Lindsey said — and Butler Middle School went 7-2-1 in its last 10 games after an 0-4 start.

After Reep's 47 points, Butler's next leading scorer has 12.

“The kid is just crazy good,” Lindey said.

“I don't think there's any jealousy with anybody,” Reep said of his lopsided point total. “We're all friends.”

Reep has also played hockey for the Butler Valley Dawgs the past two seasons, averaging nearly 20 goals per year.

Despite his early success in the sport, his hockey goals are modest ones.

“I'm hoping to make the Butler varsity as a freshman or at least be a varsity call-up during the season,” he said. “As for anything else, it's too early to be thinking beyond that.”