Erin Ward Witman

This is the second in a series of seven articles profiling the 2013 inductees into the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame.HARRISBURG — Basketball was always Erin Ward Witman’s first love.Soccer and track and field just came along for the ride.But it was all three sports — at Butler High School and Geneva College — that have earned Ward induction into the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame.Ward will be one of seven inductees to be enshrined at the BCSHOF’s annual banquet at 6 p.m. April 27 at the Butler Days Inn. She was inducted into the Butler High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011.“I’ve walked through the halls at the Days Inn, looking at pictures and reading about people who have been inducted (into the county HOF) over the years,” Ward said. “It’s always been a dream of mine to be a part of this.”She’s certainly earned it.Ward graduated from Butler in 1997 as the Golden Tornado’s fifth-leading girls basketball scorer with 1,005 points. She was team captain and MVP her junior and senior years.She reached 1,000 points despite missing her entire freshman season due to a broken leg.“We reached the playoffs my senior year and I cracked 1,000 points in that playoff game, my last high school game,” Ward recalled. “That’s a special memory for me.”She became soccer team captain and MVP as a junior and senior as well, playing goalkeeper and forward during her career. Ward won WPIAL titles in the shot put and javelin her senior year, placing second in the state meet in the javelin, sixth in the shot put.“Basketball was my first love and that’s all I planned on playing in high school,” Ward said. “There was no girls soccer program in middle school then. Girls had to play on the boys team, but our basketball season was during the fall, so I wanted no part of that.“A bunch of my friends played soccer and talked me into playing in high school.”Her father insisted she compete in track and field.“He figured it would keep me in shape for basketball, then they put me in the throwing events,” Ward recalled. “When Coach (Rick) Schontz came along, he gave me the workout program to follow and I did stay in shape.“I didn’t want to do the javelin, though. We didn’t have that event in middle school and I only wanted to do what I was used to doing. They put me in the javelin and I wound up loving it.”Ward had visions of playing Division I college basketball, then reality set in,.“I realized that wasn’t going to happen,” she said. “That’s when I expanded my thought process toward the other sports.”Geneva offered Ward a chance to compete in all three sports again and she excelled at it.She graduated second on Geneva basketball’s all-time steals list with 256, third in points with 1,367, seventh in assists with 276 and ninth in rebounds with 528.She was team MVP all four years in soccer and was second all-time with 62 goals despite playing goalkeeper her sophomore year. Ward became NCCAA national javelin champion twice and reached the NAIA National Championships in that event twice.“When Geneva showed me it was possible for me to do all three sports from their perspective, I felt like I could do it, too,” Ward said.Now married and with three small children, Ward is helping to coach her kids’ youth soccer teams in the Harrisburg area. She is a sixth-grade teacher in the Carlisle School District.Formerly an assistant high school girls basketball coach in Fairfax, Va. — also coaching two AAU teams there — Ward figures to return to coaching down the road.“Once my kids get older, I know I’ll get back into coacching,” she said. “Sports aren’t out of my system yet.”Tickets to the BCSHOF banquet are available at www.bcshof.com, from any Hall of Fame director, or at Bill’s Beer Barn, Moses Jewelers, Parker Appliance, Saxonburg Drug or Snack-N-Pack.