You can pick four coaches — and only four — as the best in Butler County.

Call it the Mount Rushmore of county coaches, if you will.

While it is virtually impossible to settle on four names here, I will give it my best shot — with the following criteria in mind.

Longevity has to be there. The coach has to be consistently successful over a long period of time. The coach must have plied his or her trade while I was around here to see it. Granted, that wipes out a lot of coaching legends from yesteryear.

But it does make this task somewhat easier.

So my Mount Rushmore of Butler County coaches include Mars football coach Scott Heinauer, Slippery Rock University football coach George Mihalik, East Butler Legion baseball coach Dess Schnur and Knoch boys basketball coach Les Shoop.

Heinauer has 166 wins in 24 seasons at Mars. His latest team finished 10-2 and reached the WPIAL semifinals, so the guy still has it.

Mihalik is retiring as SRU’s all-time victory leader, six NCAA Division II playoff appearances and back to back PSAC championships.

Schnur posted 423 wins over decades of coaching American Legion ball at East Butler, winning 10 county championships. He spearheaded numerous projects at the East Butler Baseball Complex as well.

Shoop won 511 games as a high school basketball coach, many of them coming at Knoch, where he put playoff-contending teams on the court year after year.

Can I stop there?

Of course not.

How about this for a second group? Seneca Valley wrestling coach Ken Lockey, Knoch volleyball coach Diane Geist, Karns City football coach Ed Conto and SRU baseball coach Jeff Messer.

Lockey posted 392 dual match wins and ranks among the top three all-time on the WPIAL wrestling victory list.

Geist owns more than 350 wins in 29 years of coaching volleyball and puts the Knights in the playoffs pretty much annually.

Conto is the head of the Gremlins’ football dynasty and had a successful run at A-C Valley before coming to Karns City.

Messer has won 900 games at SRU and has been to the Division II World Series on multiple occasions.

OK, let’s go one more time.

Dana Petruska, Scott Stoner, Dan Cunningham and John Tabisz.

Petruska is on her second stint with Mars girls basketball, as is Tabisz with Slippery Rock girls hoops. Petruska had 268 wins over 19 seasons the first time, Tabisz 208 wins over 17 years.

And both are winning now.

Stoner picked up his 300th win as Butler wrestling coach last season and has run a solid program for years. Cunningham has been coaching Saxonburg in Eagle County baseball forever (so it seems) and has won the league title many times.

Hats off to all of this long-term success.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle