Forming a Mount Rushmore in the sports arena always makes for fun conversation.

It can also be quite challenging.

With the high school fall sports season now upon us, the time seems right to form a Mount Rushmore of prep fall sports coaches in Butler County.

My list of candidates to be carved into this mountain proved plentiful. My final four selections were eventually determined by longtime consistent success and a state championship.

My Mount Rushmore of fall sports coaches include:

Scott Heinauer, Mars football — The man has won 132 games in 21 seasons as the dean of area high school grid coaches. Jeff Bell is entering his 16th year at Grove City.

Heinauer gets the Planets to the WPIAL playoffs all of the time, even when it appears his teams are inexperienced. He’s a slam-dunk choice for one of the four.

Clyde Conti, Butler football — No, he hasn’t turned around the Golden Tornado yet, but give him time. He’s won everywhere he’s been.

Conti enters this year having pocketed 183 victories in 39 years of coaching. He took Clarion-Limestone teams with fewer than 25 players to the playoffs and took Slippery Rock High School teams well into the postseason. This guy knows how to get kids to over-achieve.

Diane Geist, Knoch volleyball — A fixture with the Knights, she’s entering her 27th season and has plenty of section championships and playoff appearances to show for it.

Knoch shared its section title last year, the program’s first since 2007. Geist’s program is the model of consistency.

Blair Gerlach, Mars girls soccer — This team has become a WPIAL power on an annual basis and rolled to a state championship last fall.

Gerlach hasn’t been the head of that program all that long — entering just his sixth season — but he’s already got a couple of WPIAL crowns to go with that state title.

If we had the resources to build a second Mount Rushmore in this category, try these names on for size: Ed Conto, Roy Parker, Merle Whitmer and Tom Phillips.

Conto is 105-35 in 13 years as Karns City football coach, including a number of District 9 titles, after a successful stint at A-C Valley.

Parker is the Gremlins’ boys soccer coach and always has his teams in contention for district titles. Just scoring against KC can be difficult.

Whitmer is in his 28th year as Slippery Rock golf coach and has guided his teams to region championships in each of the past four years.

Phillips is Freeport’s volleyball coach and has developed the Yellowjackets into one of the top teams in the state. Freeport lost its first match last season in the WPIAL Finals.

Numerous other quality coaches have been left off these lists. Dave Sylvester, Tim Tyler, Bell, Karen Martini, Dan Mountain, Jeff Campbell, Steve Mayes ... the names go on and on.

Fall sports aren’t too bad around here.