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Pittsburg wins all-sports award; Fort Scott third
Pittsburg is the winner of the 2008 Martin Rohde Award, a trophy given out by the Southeast Kansas League each season to the school that performs the best in the 15 sports the league sponsors.
Rohde was a coach and educator in Pittsburg for many years. The first award in his honor was handed out after the 1976-77 school year.
Chanute finished second in the tabulation while Fort Scott was third.
Schools are given points based on where they place in each sport. If a sport is sponsored by all nine schools, the best school receives nine points, second place eight, third place seven and so on down to one point for the ninth-place team. If fewer than nine schools sponsor a sport, the scale is adjusted with the champion receiving the most points and the last-place team one, still in one-point increments.
Pittsburg, the SEK champion in football, baseball and boys' track, scored 81 1/2 points to win the award for the sixth time. This was the first time the Purple Dragons have won the award since 1990. Fort Scott has won the award most, nine times. Independence follows with seven awards followed by Pittsburg's six.
Pittsburg also finished second or tied for second in three sports and was third in three more.
Chanute scored 78 points while Fort Scott had 77. The Blue Comets moved ahead of the Tigers on the final day of regular-season competition when Independence swept Parsons in a softball doubleheader. That ensured Chanute would finish ahead of Parsons in softball, giving the Comets one more point to prevent a tie with Fort Scott.
Chanute was champion in four sports: boys' cross-country, volleyball, wrestling, boys' golf and girls' track. The Comets were second in one sport and third in two others.
Fort Scott finished third despite the fact that it did not win a championship in any sport. This is the first time since 1990-91 that Fort Scott did not win any league titles. This is also the highest any school has finished without winning any sports in Rohde Award tabulation since detailed records begin with the 1992-93 school year. The previous high finish for a school that didn't win any league championships was fourth. The Tigers were second in five sports and third in four others. Fort Scott finished second or third in each of the league's five spring sports.
Labette County was fourth with 71 1/2 points, winning girls' basketball. The Grizzlies were second in one other sport and third in one other.
Independence won four sports but finished fifth in tabulation with 71 points. The reason this happened is because Independence won two championships in which the winner receives fewer than nine points: Soccer and girls' cross-country. Only five schools play soccer, so the first-place team receives five points. Only seven have girls' cross-country and, in addition, two of the schools that do have it were ineligible to score points because they did not have full teams for the league championship meet. Due to this, winning girls' cross-country also scored only five points.
Independence also won both tennis championships.
Other sports with fewer than nine points are boys' cross-country, in which the winner receives six points, and wrestling, where the champion gets eight points.
Among them, Pittsburg, Chanute and Independence won 12 of the 15 sports the SEK sponsors.
The other champions were Coffeyville in boys' basketball and Columbus in softball.
Coffeyville finished sixth in points with 59 followed by Iola with 57, Parsons with 44 and Columbus with 43.
NOTES: The 3 1/2-point margin between Pittsburg and Chanute tied for third lowest. Fort Scott won by 1 1/2 points over Labette County in 1999 and 2000. Chanute defeated co-runners-up Fort Scott and Pittsburg by three points last year. LCHS beat Fort Scott by 3 1/2 points in 2006…..
For the second consecutive year, the Rohde Award runner-up won more sports than the champion. This also happened in 1995 and 2001….
The 81 1/2 points Pittsburg scored are third fewest for a Rohde Award winner. Fort Scott won the award with 77 points in 1995 and 79 1/2 in 1999….
1976-77 -- Coffeyville
1977-78 -- Coffeyville
1978-79 -- Independence
1979-80 -- Independence
1980-81 -- Pittsburg
1981-82 -- Pittsburg
1982-83 -- Pittsburg
1983-84 -- Pittsburg
1984-85 -- Independence
1985-86 -- Parsons
1986-87 -- Parsons
1987-88 -- Labette County
1988-89 -- Labette County
1989-90 -- Pittsburg
1990-91 -- Labette County
1991-92 -- Independence
1992-93 -- Independence
1993-94 -- Fort Scott
1994-95 -- Fort Scott
1995-96 -- Fort Scott
1996-97 -- Fort Scott
1997-98 -- Labette County
1998-99 -- Fort Scott
1999-2000 -- Fort Scott
2000-01 -- Independence
2001-02 -- Independence
2002-03 -- Fort Scott
2003-04 -- Fort Scott
2004-05 -- Fort Scott
2005-06 -- Labette County
2006-07 -- Chanute
2007-08 -- Pittsburg