KARNS CITY — The Karns City High baseball program believes in promoting from within.

Travis Twentier, a 1996 Butler graduate, recently became the third straight Gremlins assistant coach to be promoted to the head job.

Twentier, 31, served as assistant pitching coach at Karns City for the past three years. He succeeds Tom Stewart as head coach.

"We believe Travis is a good fit for us," Karns City athletic director Tom Wagner said. "He is qualified for the position. The lone concern is the lack of head coaching experience."

But Karns City has gone this route before.

Stewart was an assistant coach under Rocky Brown for three years at KC before taking over. Brown was an assistant under Dave McElroy before being named head coach.

"Promoting from within has worked for this program in the past and we hope it does so again," Wagner said.

The Gremlins finished 10-6 last season, losing to Redbank Valley in the first round of the District 9 playoffs.

"We've been a little over .500, barely getting into the playoffs the past few years," Twentier said. "I'm hoping to bring more young kids into the program and extend beyond where we're at right now.

"This is a great opportunity for me. Karns City has a strong winning tradition in a lot of sports."

Twentier played baseball at Butler County Community College and Penn State-Behrend. He coached the Center Township American Legion team for a year, served as assistant coach at BC3 for a season and was an assistant coach for a UAA Colt team in Karns City.

"One of the things you have to adjust to here is that some of the baseball players also run track," Twentier said. "I need to develop a good working relationship with some of the other coaches that way.

"Our overall (number of players was) down last year. We played some junior varsity games with nine players. We'll do that again if we have to because having a JV team can only help the program."

The Gremlins have nearly 30 boys involved in the baseball program.

Wagner said Karns City is one of the few schools its size in the district that fields a junior varsity baseball squad.

"A lot of schools we play don't have junior varsity teams, so we don't get JV games in and that actually hurts interest in our program," Wagner said. "We need to find a way to get more JV games on the schedule."

"My goal is to build a program here, as long as it takes," said Twentier, a substitute teacher in the Karns City district. "As long as my job status permits, I'll be sticking around here."