BUTLER TWP — The kick returner headed upfield and Emery Douthett would pursue — or make — the tackle.

And Troy Mohney would cringe.

“I see something like that and I hold my breath,” Mohney said. “But I love it at the same time.”

Mohney is the Butler High School varsity boys soccer coach. Douthett was the kicker and punter for the Golden Tornado football team.

And Mohney's leading scorer on the soccer pitch.

“Emery bugged me for a long time about playing another position for us along with kicking,” Butler football coach Eric Christy said. “He knew we were low on numbers and he wanted to help out.

“Believe me, I could have used him. But there was no way I wanted to risk him getting hurt in football. Soccer was having a good season and he's important to them.”

While the football team went winless, the Tornado soccer team finished 13-6-1 and reached the second round of the WPIAL playoffs. Douthett led the team with 12 goals.

He averaged 36.4 yards per punt and drilled 18 of 19 PATs for the football team — and made four solo tackles on special teams.

“I enjoy both sports, so I figured, why not do both?,” Douthett said. “This is the only time in my life I'll be able to do that, so I just went for it.”

He even played both sports on the same day.

Butler soccer had a 10 a.m. Saturday game Oct. 12 at Knoch. The Tornado football team had a noon kickoff against Central Catholic at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh the same day.

“I had all my football stuff loaded in the car,” Douthett said. “I played the first half of the soccer game and Coach (Mohney) let me go down to the football game at that point.”

Douthett scored a goal in the first half of the soccer contest.

He was in uniform for kickoff of the football game.

“I cut it pretty close,” he said, smiling. “They were wrapping up warmups before the game and I went running out there. My parents drove me down.”

That demonstrated the dedication Douthett had to both sports — and neither of his head coaches will forget.

“He wanted to help both teams,” Mohney said. “Eric and I worked together to allow him to play and practice for both.

“I've got a lot of respect for Emery. He's a team-first kind of guy. He started out playing defender for us. When we needed to move him up to forward for added scoring, he did that. He can play either position.”

Christy said Douthett was more than a kicker and punter for him.

“Emery was a football player,” the coach said. “He never shied away from contact. To the contrary, he went looking for it.”

Douthett carries a 3.5 grade point average despite the self-imposed rigorous practice schedule he went through to keep up with both sports.

He attended soccer practice each afternoon after school, then caught the end of football practice for special teams work. Soccer games would fall on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, football, of course, on Fridays.

And he'd schedule kicking practice workouts on Saturdays and Sundays with kicking coach Steve VanLaningham, or just practice on his own.

“I'd get pretty tired by early evening,” Douthett admitted. “I'd go home, have dinner, take a nap or just zone out for a while.”

Douthett plans to study aviation in college. He is unsure of his collegiate destination or which sport he'll attempt to play.

“Trying to do both in college would be too much,” he said. “I'm going to have to pick one.”

Mohney said he could play defender or forward for a small-college team.

“He's a skilled player and could produce up front,” Mohney said. “He's also tough as nails in the back. He's a competitor.”

“Whatever he chooses to do in college and in life, he'll do fine,” Christy said of Douthett. “In practice, he was hitting field goals from beyond 40 yards for us.

“To excel for two teams at the same time the way he did? That's just a credit to him.”