GWOC North football teams establishing dominance

GWOC North rebound

Trotwood-Madison has led a resurgence of the GWOC North Division:

In the seventh grade, when Troy’s Cody May and other opponents played the Vandalia middle-schoolers, they saw an already gigantic Taylor Decker and stared with interest.

He had to be at least 6-foot-5, they thought (he would grow into a current 6-8, 315-pound Vandalia Butler senior and Notre Dame recruit). And they would be seeing him in future years.

“He was so big,” said May, Troy’s senior quarterback. “He just looked like a man out there compared to us.”

But Decker wasn’t the only player from those teams who would make a big impact for his future school. As the Greater Western Ohio Conference enters divisional play this week, the North Division has flexed its muscle with a group of players including May and Decker that has been watched closely since its days in Wednesday night junior-high games.

The division, which has trailed the usually powerful Central Division in attention since realignment in 2008, includes two undefeated teams (Trotwood-Madison and Vandalia Butler), the No. 1 team in the Dayton Daily News Division I ratings (Troy) and the most recent area state champion in the top two divisions (Piqua). Combined, those four teams are 17-3 midway through the regular season.

In 2008, the year after Northmont left to complete the Central Division when Springfield’s North and South high schools merged, Piqua, Trotwood, Troy and Butler went a combined 19-21.

“But you went to those freshman games, and it was a war,” Troy coach Steve Nolan said. “Everybody was beating up on each other. As those classes grew, you could see that competition coming.”

It will begin Friday night, as Butler travels to face Troy and Trotwood hosts Piqua. During the next four weeks, the tight contests that started in junior high will translate to the varsity fields.

Trotwood is ranked No. 2 in the state in Division II and has widely been considered the top team in the Dayton area this season. Butler has produced the league’s top rushing offense with the help of Decker and Ball State-committed Miles Eaton on the offensive line in front of running back Tyler Jones (220.8 yards per game).

Troy’s only loss came from state-ranked Middletown 29-21, and the Trojans have since won three straight.

Piqua is 3-2, but the Indians fell by a field goal to Fairfield and a touchdown to Lebanon. They responded by beating Fairmont 56-27 last week, which moved the North Division Big Four to 5-0 against their Central counterparts in crossover games this season.

The North Division teams’ relationship goes far beyond recent seasons, as they were once members of the Greater Miami Valley Conference, which merged with the Western Ohio League to form the GWOC. Greenville, another former GMVC member, will join the division next season when it becomes a full football-playing member of the league.

The current teams, though, are more familiar with each other from the junior high, freshman and junior varsity games that were so competitive in recent years. The next goal is to reach the playoffs (Troy is in D-I, Region 3, while the others are in D-II, Region 8) and beyond.

“Whoever survives Region 8 has a really good shot at going all the way,” Butler coach Greg Bush said. “It’s a very tough region, and we’ll all be fighting just to get there.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7389 or knagel@DaytonDailyNews.com.