Friendly rivals
BUTLER TWP — Four friends, soon to be foes.
But the friendships will endure.
Butler High School's football senior class is sending four players on to college ball this fall. All four — quarterback Zach Rader, linemen Chris Albert, Chris Huselton and Ben McKnight — are close friends and are headed to the same conference.
But not the same team.
Rader and McKnight are going to Grove City College, Huselton to Westminster, Albert to Geneva. Each school is a member of the Division III Presidents' Athletic Conference.
Huselton pulled for Rader on the sidelines the past four years. Now he'll be trying to sack him in coming years.
“You know it's going to happen,” he said, looking at Rader and smiling.
Rader decided to attend Grove City before discovering McKnight was headed to the same school.
“I'm going to know at least one guy on the team when we report,” Rader said. “We get four more years of football together. It's going to be a blast.”
Albert is looking forward to renewing acquaintances in the PAC.
“It's going to be a cool feeling, meeting up after games and talking football,” he said.
What else? A mutual passion for football is what bonded these friendships in the first place. The four attended the prom together with their dates. They hang out with each other during the summer and after school.
“We worked out on weekends and through the summer,” Albert said. “We just found each other that way. When you're together three hours a day on the practice field, you get to know each other.”
Rader and Albert have known each other since fourth grade and were teammates on a Butler Area Midget Football League championship team at Center Township.
McKnight played for East Side and brags that “we still have the most championships” in BAMFL history. Huselton played for Butler Junior High.The four were teammates on a Golden Tornado freshman team that finished 1-8-1, then endured a 23-game losing streak with the varsity that ended with last year's 24-14 season-opening win over New Castle.Rader scored the first Butler touchdown in that game and McKnight recovered a fumble in the second quarter that set up the tying TD as the Tornado rallied from a 14-0 deficit.“It felt good,” Huselton recalled. “Ending that streak meant everything to us. We wanted to be part of the senior class that got rid of it.”The quartet had three different head coaches and learned three different systems during their three varsity seasons. Now, all four are headed to stable programs.• Chris Smith has been head coach at Grove City for 27 years. The Wolverines were 3-7 last season and Rader becomes the third quarterback on the roster.Geneva has made postseason play in 14 of coach Geno DeMarco's 19 years at the helm. The Golden Tornadoes are coming off a 4-6 campaign.Westminster is coming off a 5-5 season and its four conference wins marked the most the Titans have secured in a PAC season since joining the league in 2000. Jeff Hand is entering his eighth year as head coach.“When we were freshmen, we talked about playing Division I football and going to bowl games. ... Then reality hits,” McKnight said. “Now we're just happy to have a chance to keep playing football.“We love this game.”Off the field, Huselton plans to major in sports management, Albert in computer science, Rader in business management, McKnight in mechanical engineering.On the field, all four want to contribute to winning teams.“It's time to put the losing behind us,” Albert said.“Running all of those wind sprints together, putting in the hard work all those years — it all paid off,” Huselton said. “We may have been losing, but we're still going.“I'm proud of that.”
