Pittsburg wins 4th consecutive all-sports trophy

Friday, May 20, 2011

Pittsburg High School has tied a league record by winning the Southeast Kansas League's Martin Rohde All-Sports Trophy for the fourth consecutive school year.

Pittsburg won eight league sports in the 2010-11 school year -- Girls' cross-country, volleyball, football, wrestling, boys' golf, girls' track, boys' track out right and sharing baseball with Columbus. This is very likely a league record. Previously, Labette County won seven sports in 1997-98 school year.

In addition to these past four seasons, Pittsburg also won four straight Rohde Awards from 1981-84 and Fort Scott won four in a row from 1994-97. This is also Pittsburg's ninth award, tying Fort Scott for the most won by a school.

Going on an inverted point scale where the league champion in each sport earned the most points and the ninth-place team earned the fewest, Pittsburg finished with 97 points. While it had the eight first-place finishes, Pittsburg had no second-place finishers.

Chanute finished in second place with 87 1/2 points. The 9 1/2-point margin between Pittsburg and Chanute is the widest since Fort Scott won the 2004-05 award by 23 1/2 points. Between 2005 and this year, the widest margin had been 5 1/2 points.

Chanute won the girls' golf title and was second in volleyball (tied), boys' basketball, girls' track and boys' track.

Independence finished third with 75 points and was the league champion in girls' tennis, boys' tennis and soccer and runner-up in girls' cross-country, football, girls' basketball and boys' golf.

Fort Scott did not win any league titles -- just the second time this has happened since 1984-85 -- but finished fourth with 72 1/2 points. The Tigers were runners-up in volleyball (tied) and softball and third in girls' golf, boys' tennis and baseball (tied).

Parsons was fifth with 65 1/2 points, winning boys' basketball. Labette County was sixth with 62 1/2 points, taking boys' cross country, girls' basketball and softball. Iola and Coffeyville tied for seventh place with 47 points -- neither school won a league title. Columbus finished ninth with 45 points, tying with Pittsburg for the baseball crown, which was the school's first in that sport.

Independence has won this award seven times, Labette County five, Parsons and Coffeyville twice each and Chanute once. Columbus and Iola have never won the award since it was created for the 1976-77 school year.

NOTES -- Fort Scott has won at least one league sport 24 of the last 26 seasons. The last time it did not win one sport was 2006-07. Since 1980-81, FSHS has not gone more than two school years between league titles in at least one sport. However this is far removed from a period from 1932-33 to 1962-63 in which FSHS won a total of one league championship (1947-48 boys' golf)....