[Stardust]

When Butler hosts unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Trinity in a Class 6-A semifinal playoff game at 7:30 tonight, it will remind fans just how far the Bears have come during the four-year reign of coach Scott Carmony.

In 2008 he took over a once-proud football program that had lost 15 straight games. That streak grew to 23 when his first team at the Shively school lost its first eight games.

“We won two of our last three games in ’08, and that’s when the lights came on,” Carmony said.

The winless streak came to an end when the Bears beat Holy Cross 34-20 on Halloween. Since then Butler has gradually improved to where it has a 24-22 record under Carmony, including this year’s 11-2 mark to take against a 12-0 Trinity team that is No. 1 in several national rankings.

“I left the comforts of home when I left Jeffersontown,” Carmony said. “When I first got here at Butler I asked myself, ‘Am I the craziest guy in the world?’ Everything I found at Butler was dead last in 6-A.”

How did he turn it around?

“It was a slow process of sticking to the plan,” he said. “The kids bought into the physical nature of the game. That was such a glaring thing. That was job No. 1. For two or three springs we did nothing but learn to block and tackle. We kept grinding, and it got better each year.”

In 2009 Butler started out 6-0 but lost its last five games, including its playoff opener to Simon Kenton 49-7. Last season the Bears finished 5-6 after a 4-1 start, losing to Ballard 42-12 in the first round of the playoffs.

Butler, which won a 3-A state title in 1970 and a 4-A crown in 1979, is riding a seven-game winning streak since losing to Manual 40-35 on Sept. 29. Its other loss was to Male 13-10 in the season opener.

“It’s been a really fun year,” said Carmony, whose team is No. 14 in The Courier-Journal’s Litkenhous Ratings. “The seniors this year were my first freshman class, and they’ve been through the grind. I’ve enjoyed the heck out of being around this bunch of kids. For the most part they’ve shown up every Friday night.”

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