Hopes are high for the upcoming season for fifth-year Tri-Valley football coach Cam West and his Scotties, who return a majority of starters at the skill positions, and on both sides of the line of scrimmage as well, from last year’s 9-3 MVL title team. So what better time than to take a capsuled look at Tri-Valley football history, through the eyes of someone who has seen, played, and reported on Scottie pigskin exploits for all but three years of the school’s 58-year existence, Dresden Buzz Sports contributor Gregg Meadows. Meadows will also be contributing additional TVHS Sports history articles to the Dresden Buzz through the remainder of the summer months…
by Gregg Meadows
In the fall of 1966, three school systems – in alphabetical order, Adamsville, Dresden and Frazeysburg, came together as one to form the Tri-Valley School District, under the leadership of Superintendent Norbert Kurtz, and legendary principal Jack Anderson – the former Jefferson High School principal – whose name is on our football stadium.
John Krichbaum was tasked with handling the head coaching duties of the first Tri-Valley football team, as excitement was high in the Tri-Valley area for the first season of Scotties football.
The personable Coach Krichbaum would lead the Scotties for their first three gridiron seasons, enjoying his best year in his final season in the fall of 1968, leading TVHS to a record of 6-3-1.
In the fall of 1969, Jerry Porteus would become the second head football coach of the Scotties, leading the Scotties for five seasons including the 1971 season, which saw the sad passing of TVHS principal Jack Anderson, just one month into the new school year. The likeable Coach Porteus compiled a 30-22-2 record in his five seasons at TVHS.
Veteran football coach and Zanesville native William Damsel proved to be a one-year wonder for Tri-Valley football, leading the Scotties to a respectable 6-4 season in the fall of 1974, his only season in Dresden.
Damsel gave way to another Zanesville product the following year, Ken ‘Butch’ Wilson, who guided the Tri-Valley football program for four seasons, heading the Scottie gridiron classes of 1976-79.
In the fall of 1979, Tri-Valley welcomed back a familiar face, Jim Kaser, who was a former assistant at Tri-Valley. Coach Kaser enjoyed a 19-year stay in Dresden, winning 91 games and guiding the Scotties to several winning seasons, including the Scottie’s first MVL title season of 1989, when 9-1 Tri-Valley finished the season atop the Muskingum Valley League pigskin standings for the first time in school history.
Coach Kaser’s near 20-year tenure at Tri-Valley was followed by a three year stay by the two-platoon and offensive-minded Rick Sharp, who guided Scottie football through the 1998, 99, and 2000 seasons, then a one-year visit as head coach – back to his alma mater – by Darrin Waters for the 2001 season. Waters short stay was followed by a two-year stint as head coach for the 2002 and 2003 seasons by the versatile Erin Nezbeth, who now has Tri-Valley athletics covered from A to Z as the school’s most capable athletic director at Muskingum County’s largest school.
In February of 2004, in a long-awaited effort toward improving its football program, the Tri-Valley School Board of Education – spearheaded by the enthusiastic and knowledgeable efforts of Superintendent Doug Spade – approved the hiring of 27-year old Justin Buttermore. Buttermore came to Dresden with no head coaching experience, but an established football pedigree – as a player, and as an assistant coach.
Buttermore was tabbed to head a Scottie football program that in its 38-year existence, had just one claim to fame – its 1989 Muskingum Valley League gridiron title – and was known as ‘the football team from a basketball school”.
For the record – up until the Buttermore hire – Scottie football owned a 158-212-8 record (an average of under five wins per season in its near four decades of existence at Muskingum County’s biggest school) starting with the school’s first football team in the fall of 1966 thru the fall of 2003’s third straight 2-8 mark.
Buttermore’s Scotties had a brief, two-year ‘maturation period’, going 3-7 and 4-6 in his first two seasons.
But in his third season, in the fall of 2006, it all fell into place, with the school’s first winning football season in 13 years – and most significantly – it’s first-ever OHSAA state playoff appearance, when the Scotties faced pigskin powerhouse Dover in ‘Week 11’ (an unheard phrase at TVHS up until then) on the Tornadoes fabled Crater Stadium field.
Despite the disappointing 49-14 defeat (starting Scottie junior QB standout Cam West left the game in the first quarter with a hip injury) the wheels had been set in motion for what would be a meteoric rise of the Tri-Valley football program that would also rejuvenate a football-starved community in Scottieland.
Starting with the 2006 season’s ‘turnaround’ 8-3 squad, the gridiron Scotties would dominate play in the Muskingum Valley League for the next 11 seasons.
Coach Buttermore’s Scottie charges amassed an incredible 90-6 record in conference play, (which included a 47-game Muskingum Valley League win streak) nine league titles, (including the last seven) 10 playoff appearances (with an overall 12-10 post season record), which was all capped by the 2017 season’s magical 13-2 season and state runner-up finish, when Tri-Valley came within a whisker of a state title after their 27-19 defeat at the hands of Trotwood Madison in the state championship game at the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Tom Benson Stadium.
You will get no doubters when stating that Justin Buttermore indeed built an MVL football dynasty in Dresden during his 14-year tenure.
With that, and a final career record of 124-38 as the Tri-Valley Scottie head football coach, Justin Buttermore’s legacy was complete, and his legendary status retained for as long as they play football at Jack Anderson Stadium.
Kevin Fell took over for Coach Justin Buttermore at the beginning of the 2018 football season. Fell came in with a career coaching mark that included 273 career wins and a state title with Delphos Jefferson back in 1986. In his first season in Dresden, he took the Scotties into yet another playoff season with a 10-2 record, and an MVL title, then led TV to a 7-3 record in his second season before retiring from the coaching ranks in the offseason after two years in Dresden.
TVHS Athletic Hall of Famer Cameron West was named head football coach for the Scotties in 2020 to replace Kevin Fell. During his time as quarterback at TVHS, Coach West guided Tri-Valley to their first playoff appearance (2006) and playoff win (2007).
West, who earned All-Ohio accolades as a player in football and baseball at TVHS, continued his winning ways after high school. He spent four years as a defensive back at Division III power Mount Union, where he earned his degree in education. After college, Coach West eventually made his way back to Dresden where he became a fixture on Coach Justin Buttermore’s staff. During his tenure as an assistant coach at Tri-Valley, West was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2016 and helped guide the Scotties to a State Runner-Up finish in 2017.
Coach West enters his fifth season this fall at the helm of Scotties football. In his first four seasons in Dresden, he guided his teams to 8-2, 8-3, 9-3, and 9-3 records with MVL titles earned in 2021, and last season, when his gridironers earned the school’s 13th conference pigskin title, captured a Week 11 post season win at Jack Anderson Stadium over Buckeye Valley, then dropped a Week 12 nail-biter and heartbreaker to host Granville.
And that’s a brief history of Tri-Valley football – stay tuned!
