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HOF class features connections

The Butler County Sports Hall of Fame is not inducting any one team during its annual banquet this weekend.

The BCSHOF is, however — perhaps without even realizing it — honoring three storied programs in the county.

The Mars girls basketball program, a consistent winner for years, will be represented by two inductees in retired coach Dana Petruska and standout forward Lily Grenci.

The former collected 518 wins in her coaching career — mostly with Mars — 23 WPIAL playoff appearances, 11 PIAA postseason berths and one state championship. Oddly enough, none of those wins involved Grenci.

During Grenci’s years at Mars High School, Petruska was coaching at Deer Lakes. All Grenci did was become a three-time section MVP, score 1,718 points while collecting more than 1,000 rebounds for the Planets, then score 1,074 points at Division I Siena during her college career.

Petruska and Grenci did have a bit of a connection. The former was the latter’s gym teacher at Mars.

Slippery Rock University’s football and track and field programs have been as steady as they come over the years. Both will be represented Saturday night as former Rock center Brandon Fusco and retired track coach John Papa are being inducted.

Fusco played eight years in the NFL, but his football career was transformed during his career at The Rock. He pounded the weight room in college, became one of the most dominant linemen in the country at any level of college and won the Gene Upshaw Award as the best lineman in all of Division II football.

Papa’s record speaks for itself. He coached track and cross country at SRU for 35 years, putting together 12 national championship teams and and 127 All-Americans. His teams won a whopping 25 PSAC championships.

He did plenty of that with Butler County athletes and others from Western Pennsylvania. The sign of a great coach is maximizing the ability of the athletes.

Papa and Petruska did plenty of that.

Wise move

Rather than wait until the NFL Draft to help retool their quarterback room, the Steelers picked up Russell Wilson and dealt for Justin Fields. These are two veterans — one old, one young — who may or may not pan out.

But they’ve already generated plenty of NFL experience.

Six quarterbacks were taken among the first 12 picks on Thursday night, all by teams searching for that franchise guy. If the Steelers wanted any of those guys, they would have had to trade up and sacrifice draft capital to do it.

They spared themselves that expense — and potentially may prove better off with the experience behind center.

That’s one move Pittsburgh’s made that, at least for now, sees to be a smart one.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle

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