Six games in, Centerville's senior linebacker has the GWOC's best tackle numbers by a wide margin — and around the program, a fun question has started making the rounds. Could he be the best inside linebacker Centerville has had since another well-known A.J. wore the Elks uniform?

Inside this issue: Girls Tennis sent seven players into the sectional and got seven players out — every Elk is headed to districts. Volleyball sweeps its way to 9-0 in the GWOC. Both soccer programs sit atop the conference. A sophomore quarterback is quietly climbing the GWOC passing leaderboard, and the postseason math is still alive. And a basketball point guard spent five days learning to kick a football — and the student section wouldn't stop chanting his name.

Watch Centerville's defense long enough this season and you start to notice it: more often than not, No. 1 is the reason the ball carrier is on the ground. Six games in, A.J. Taylor has 81 tackles — the most in the GWOC, and it isn't particularly close. Soren Vitas is right behind him at No. 2 with 60, tied for the conference lead in sacks.

Two Elks. Top two spots in the entire league.

It's the kind of production that starts conversations on its own. Is A.J. Taylor the best inside linebacker Centerville has had since another well-known A.J. wore the uniform? Nobody has to settle that this week — it's just the kind of thing that gets said around a program when a linebacker is playing like this.

Honorable mention to senior Jay Holbert, who draws frequent double teams in the trenches and does the unglamorous work that lets the linebackers behind him flow freely to the ball.

The record says one thing. The schedule says the story isn't finished.

Win the final four games, and Centerville's playoff computer points put the Elks over a 90% chance at a postseason spot. Win the next two and split the last two, and that number is still nearly 60%. Either way, this isn't a team mathematically buried in October — the path is real, even if it isn't easy.

A big reason it's still alive: sophomore quarterback Alex Keely keeps getting better, week over week, against one of the toughest schedules in the entire state of Ohio. He's already No. 2 in the entire GWOC in passing yards — remarkable for a sophomore still learning the position in real time. Josh Becker has emerged as a legitimate target, ranked among the GWOC's top receivers. And don't lose Sam Keely in all of it — Alex's older brother missed a few games this season, so his raw numbers undersell him, but he's a matchup problem every time he's on the field. At 6-foot-5 with sneaky speed and reliable hands, he draws double coverage most Fridays, which is exactly why his stat line doesn't tell the full story.

Call it a long shot if you want. Just don't call it over.

Centerville sent seven players into the OHSAA Division I Centerville Sectional. All seven came out the other side with a ticket to the Southwest District Tournament — all three singles players and both doubles teams.

This is more than five entries advancing. It's seven athletes, and every one of them is still playing. It caps a regular season in which Centerville went 7-0 in the GWOC — perfect in league play, conference champions — and sits at 15-3 overall.

It's also not the first time. Centerville pulled off the same 7-for-7 sectional sweep in 2024, which makes 2026 the second time in three seasons that every Elk in the sectional draw has moved on to the district tournament.

And look at who's doing it. Three of the seven qualifiers are freshmen. Five of the seven are underclassmen. Centerville is winning right now and building a very young core at the same time — the kind of combination that tends to keep a program in this conversation for a while.

Centerville swept Springfield in three sets last night, extending its GWOC record to 9-0 — undefeated in conference play, with a game clear of second place and growing. The signature win remains the road sweep of a Springboro team that entered that night unbeaten in the conference.

Sophomore Tanley Ryan leads the entire GWOC in kills. Senior Hadley Heil leads the league outright in digs. Sophomores Reagan Conner, Elaina Greenfield, and MK Halton, plus freshman Peyton Tuff, round out six Centerville players sitting in the GWOC's top five across kills, digs, aces, assists, and blocks.

Six Elks. Six different leaderboards. And a freshman is already one of them.

Centerville is tied atop the GWOC with Beavercreek — both teams perfect through conference play, the league's last two unbeaten sides as the schedule heads into its final stretch. Neither team has blinked yet, and with the way both programs have played, it may come down to the two of them meeting with first place on the line.

Maddox Rose, a senior, is one of the most productive offensive players in the conference: 35 points and 14 goals, both No. 2 in the GWOC, with 7 assists tied for second. Rose has been the engine of this offense all fall, the kind of senior who makes the players around him better just by demanding the ball in the right spots.

At the other end, senior goalkeeper Wyatt Schlegel leads the entire league in shutouts. Centerville's 5-0-0 conference mark isn't an accident — it's a team that controls games from both directions, scoring at one end and refusing to give anything up at the other.

Rose at one end, Schlegel at the other. Centerville is built to finish this thing unbeaten.

Centerville is the only team in the GWOC without a loss or a tie in conference play, most recently a 1-0 win over Miamisburg. The overall record tells a different, more interesting story: like the football program, this team has leaned into one of the toughest nonconference schedules it could find, and the losses on the ledger came against legitimate competition, not cupcakes. Inside the GWOC, none of that has mattered. Centerville has simply not lost.

Sophomore Addison Hogendoorn leads the entire conference in assists with 8 — outright, not shared — while also sitting second in the league in total points. Complete offensive production, from a player with two more seasons left to play. She's the kind of underclassman who makes opposing coaches game-plan a year ahead.

What makes this group dangerous going forward is the same thing that makes the volleyball team dangerous: there's no graduation cliff coming. Most of the production is young, which means whatever Centerville is building this fall, it isn't a one-year thing.

Ty Rohrer is Centerville's starting point guard. Five days before Friday's game, he'd never kicked a football in a game in his life.

That's not an exaggeration for effect — it's the actual timeline. Rohrer picked up kicking with less than a week of practice, and by Friday night he was 2-for-3 on field goals, perfect on every PAT he attempted, and lined up for a 48-yard attempt that had plenty of leg on it. He just missed.

What made it a story wasn't just the leg. It was the reaction. The student section chanted his name through the game — not something that happens for a kicker, almost ever. But Rohrer isn't just any kicker. He's the guy running the point for Centerville basketball, a known tough-as-nails competitor with a team-first reputation that extends well beyond one sport. When the students saw him line up, they already knew who he was and what he was about. The chants weren't for the position. They were for him.

Rohrer finished the night with 8 points — and with that single performance, he's now 4th on the entire team in scoring for the season. One game. Five days of practice. Not bad for a point guard moonlighting as a kicker.

Girls Golf has five players inside the GWOC's season-long top 10 scoring averages — Sofia Baldridge, Stella Chapman, Rebecca Baldwin, Annalyse Infante, and Anna Dsouza. Most of that group isn't done yet; the bulk of the lineup returns next season.

Boys Golf has Jakob Allen inside the GWOC's top 10, and freshman Rocco Perito already in the league's top 15 in his first season. Behind them, Centerville has nine golfers inside the GWOC's top 45 — a program with real depth, not just a strong top of the lineup.