Power shift
With Grove City's Wes Phipps capturing the Butler Eagle Scoring Trophy last year, it marked the second time in three seasons a District 10 player has earned the honor.
In the 21 years of the award, Phipps was the first from Grove City and just the fourth from the district — Josh Kniess (Slippery Rock, 2000), Travis Sarver (Slippery Rock, tied in 2003) and Jono Powell (Slippery Rock, 2008) were the others.
Sandwiched between the first three years by Freeport (Brian Kurn in 1990 and Ron DeJidas in 1991 and 1992) and Mars (Paul Ferrese in 2005 and Bill Bair in 2006 and 2007), the trophy enjoyed a nice run by District 9 schools claiming 11 of 13 years between 1993 to 2004.
Current Karns City coach Ed Conto was the coach of seven of those, three coming as coach at A-C Valley (1996-98) and four more with the Gremlins (2001-04).
“It's a nice trophy for anyone,” said Conto. “It means your offense is doing a good job and the line is blocking well.
“Sometimes teams score other ways like punt returns, kickoff returns so it says a lot for the athlete,” Conto added.
When Conto was coaching the Falcons, Jason Hackwelder won with 132 points in 1996, followed by Steve Spiker with 124 points and Mike Leach with 146.
Conto stepped down after the season to take an administrative position at Karns City, but under Scott Austin, Leach repeated with 198 points in 1999.Conto accepted the football coaching position at Karns City before the 2000 season.A year after Kniess won it, the Gremlins reeled off four straight — Billy Graham (186 points), Matt Carnahan (152) and Josh Fiscus (116 to tie Sarver, then 94 in 2004).In the years Conto's squads had the Scoring Trophy champion, the idea of a single back getting most of the looks worked well. Over the past few years, Conto has used a running back by committee, incorporating several runners, spreading out the carries.“With us, it's fair's fair,” said Conto. “Someone might be better, but guys work hard and they may add something different. When you see just a little difference, it's not fair to the others.“It has its advantages and its disadvantages. It's hard to get all the kids all on the same page.“If there's just one guy getting the reps, it makes it nice, but if a guy gets banged up, a guy comes out or gets winded, it's not like you don't have somebody different going in. They've gotten the work in and is ready,” Conto added.Either way, the winner tends to receive a bulk of the carries — every winner has been a running back except for Powell, who was a quarterback — so this year's potential winner most likely will be a team's No. 1 option.
