Anticipation builds for NWC power Greenville

By Ed Farrell
Herald Sports Writer

Most coaches would take an 8-2 record and District 10 playoff berth and run with it.

Not Bob Stone.

For those who have hinted that the 22nd-year Greenville High School head football coach is pondering retirement, guess again. There's nothing like a humbling, season-ending setback to stoke the competitive embers that burn brightly in the venerable veteran mentor.

"After that last football game (a 31-28 D-10 playoff loss to General McLane), I had no intention of ending it, any way. Even before the football game, I had every intention of coming back this year,'' Stone, 172-43-6 at the Greenville helm (second in all-time Mercer County annals), related. "I haven't given (retirement) any serious thought,'' Stone, sounding somewhat like Penn State mentor Joe Paterno, said regarding his Trojans' tenure.

Greenville garnered seven consecutive wins en route to a Northwest Conference regular-season championship showdown at Oil City, but was manhandled, 19-6. Then after winning its finale to qualify for the D-10 playoffs as an at-large entry, allowed a three-touchdown second-half lead over General McLane to dissipate, the first time in memory that has occurred. And Greenville's 8-1 regular-season record was accomplished against teams with an aggregate 40-45 mark.

"Oh yeah,'' Stone replied following a recent practice when asked if the competitive juices are flowing.

Displeased by his club's initial pre-season scrimmage at Wilmington two weeks ago, Stone spoke eagerly regarding a scrimmage with perennial WPIAL power Farrell. But he also could have been speaking in anticipation of the '99 campaign and making retribution for the manner in which '98 ended when he related,

"After you've had a bad outing, you always look forward, really, to the next one, to see if you've been able to correct anything and bounce back.

"I think, every once in a while -- though nobody likes it -- every once in a while, to get slapped around a little bit on the football field causes you to sit back and look at everything and question a lot of things that you do and maybe make some changes,'' Stone continued, cautioning, "Of course, the trick there is to not over-react and change everything -- make wholesale changes -- but to look back and try to get a sensible look at the situation and a sensible evaluation of what happened and why it happened and try to, if need be, make changes. I hope we were able to do that in the offseason.

"I hope we made some changes, although they're subtle. But we made some changes and I hope that'll put us in a little better position where we're in a state to react to the situation.''

Although last season, relatively speaking, was pretty good, the standard Greenville has established under legendary Ed Snyder and embellished by his successor, Stone, are greater than most. So in spite of back-to-back ('96-97) D-10 Class AAA titles and a pair of PIAA Final Four berths ('93, '97), Stone and his staff are hoping to re-tool the Trojans.

Greenville's ground game will remain the foundation of its offense, and the leading returning rushers from a team that amassed 2,301 rushing yards and 286 points a year ago are tailback Brian Anderle (55 carries, 371 yards, 6.7 yards/carry, 5 TDs), wingback Isaac Holiga (50-329, 6.6) and fullback Lucas Martsolf (43-110, 2.6). Eric Adams, who tallied 3 TDs in spot duty, should spell Anderle. Also returning is leading receiver Jimmy Spiegel (28 catches, 399 yards, 14.3 yards/catch).

But after six seasons of stability with Brian Tokar, Andy Mason and Cliff Mason under center, the quarterback position was unsettled midway through camp. Compounding the predicament is that both candidates, senior Luke Strosser and junior Sam Young, are coming off season-ending knee injuries.

"To be very honest, for my own peace of mind, I hope one of them becomes the clear-cut quarterback. Whichever one, I don't care, but I hope one of them steps up and gets the job done,'' Stone said.

Strosser, who played wide receiver as a sophomore, likely will return there and also play cornerback if he does not start under center.

"I think offensively, except for quarterback, position-wise, we've just about got most places settled. Defensively, there's still some (positions) up in the air,'' Stone admitted, and given his 'druthers, he assessed,

"You have to do both in order to win. You have to have enough offense to put a few points on the board, and you have to have enough defense to stop people. But at this point, right now, I think we're probably a little farther behind defensively -- and it's supposed to be the other way around -- but I think the reason for that ... some of the kids, not only did they not have much playing time (last season), but we've switched positions on them this year. "The bottom line is this: We're very inexperienced and we have to get it entirely together,'' Stone, assessing his defense which yielded only 8.3 points and 154.3 yards per game a year ago, said.

"One of the things that scares me,'' he continued, "is that, although your main concern is what you do and how good you are and how you progress, a big part of a season's success is how good your opponents are. If everybody's down, you don't have to be as good; if everybody's up, you can get your ears pinned back. You might have a better team than you had last year, but because everybody's significantly improved, you may not know it.''

As Stone sees it, the NWC, which placed four teams (Greenville, Oil City, Franklin, Meadville) in the D-10 playoffs last year, "will be very well balanced.

"Overall, it's gonna be stronger than it has been in quite a while, 'cause some of those teams have important people (notably Oil City's defense) back, and that makes them a team to be reckoned with,'' Stone forecasted.

Regarding his club, which will feature numerous underclassmen and first-year starters, Stone summarized,

"To be quite honest with you, I'll be quite surprised if we start right out like a whirlwind. We have so many new kids, and we have made a few changes and there's a learning process involved. I just hope that we're good enough to be competitive and we don't start out by getting behind the 8-ball right away. Because, obviously, in the Northwest Conference, if you lose a conference game, it's almost impossible to win, so we've got to pick up the pace ... ''

Stone will be assisted by his respective defensive and offensive coordinators, Gary Hull and Brian Herrick, as well as Kirk Smith, Gary Zane, Mark Hayes, Mark Karpinski, Terry Cooper, Mike Menold, Rick Zilla and Tokar.