sive guru wince. It didn't.
"It was tough, for sure," Butts, 35, said. "But the coolest thing about our defense was we saw improvement every week. Our big- gest problem was our ability to tackle, so as you can imagine, it's given us something to work on, and we continue to get better at it. "If you want to win football games, you can't give up explosive plays, and you have to block well and tackle well. Last year, we were really young, and we had some growing pains, blowing a coverage on 3rd-and-12 and giving up an explosive play for a touchdown
"That's part of the process, but we are getting better."
Butts grew up in central Illinois in the small town of Warrensburg before playing football — and starting every game at safety four He earned a bachelor's degree in economics with a mi- nor in legal studies (he later earned his master's degree in education from the University of Missouri) before serving as an assistant foot- ball coach at Lake Forest for 11 years. He basically did a little bit of
He came to Fulton hoping to work some of his magic. "We had 85 kids show up in August last year," Butts said, "and they had to learn Westminster has struggled mightily in recent years, not just last
year. They went a combined 2-17 in 2022-23 and haven't had a win- ning season in eight years, not including the Covid season of 2020, when they went 2-1 in an abbreviated season. You can turn a basketball program around with two or three standouts. But in football, you need dozens of them.
as Westminster will bring 55-60 new players into the program. The cant, Butts said. guys invested in what it takes to be great in the process and im- prove individually and collectively as a program. We got better in the weight room, and we got better as a program in terms of depth and competition. "You never really talk about the wins and losses. You talk about put- ting the work in the right way. You talk about the process. Culturally, how do we establish who we are and what we want to be about? How do we build what we want to do and be the best we can be?" Butts continued.
WestMO was ranked as one of the Best 150 Colleges in the Midwest in 2024 by Princeton Review.
19 Varsity Sports at the NCAA Division III level Baseball Basketball (M & W) X-Country (M & W)
Football
Golf (M & W) Soccer (M & W)
Soſtball Tennis (M & W) Track & Field (M & W)
Volleyball (M & W) Wrestling (M & W)
Show-Me Sports /// 57
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