Football: Glad Cantafio is staying

Since he took the Cedar Cliff High School football job prior to the 2008 season, Jim Cantafio hasn't been afraid to share his opinions.

He's told us numerous times that Cedar Cliff, a small Class AAAA school, should be classified as AAA. Cedar Cliff is the sixth-smallest Class AAAA school in District 3 and when the new PIAA enrollment figures came out last year, he wasn't happy that his school remained in the state's largest classification and shared his feelings with us.

Before the start of the 2010 season, we called Cantafio and asked him about offseason weight training in football. He put it bluntly and said when he arrived at Cedar Cliff, his players weren't exactly in football shape. Cantafio has worked hard to improve Cedar Cliff's offseason program and, judging by the on-field results the last two years, he's doing a nice job.

There have been numerous times we've called Cantafio looking for his opinion on things that don't always directly involve his Colts (the rivalry with Red Land, his thoughts on 2010 Defensive Player of the Year, Mechanicsburg junior Bryton Barr and the proposed six classifications for football) and he's never turned us down.

Now, here's our opinion: we're glad Cantafio is staying at Cedar Cliff. He applied for the Hempfield opening this winter and was a finalist before the administration determined that neither he nor the other finalist, Mark Evans, were good enough for the job.

That's a win for both Cedar Cliff and the Mid-Penn Conference. Other than being easy to work with, Cantafio is good for the Mid-Penn. He's passionate about his job and has a burning desire to win football games.

Cantafio has brought Cedar Cliff back from the dead -- the Colts qualified for the 3-AAAA postseason each of the last two years -- and will continue to challenge for the Mid-Penn Keystone Division title.

It's not surprising that Cantafio applied for the Hempfield job -- it's a big school (fifth-largest in the district) that competes in the Lancaster-Lebanon League, which is where he experienced success at both Conestoga Valley and Wilson.

But now that he's likely to stay at Cedar Cliff for at least the 2011 season, the Colts need to move on and prepare for what should be an outstanding season -- Cedar Cliff returns nearly its whole team and will be one of the favorites in the Keystone -- that could very well last until Thanksgiving.