There is a football field in Silver Lake with a sign that reads Rumrill-Tschimperle Field. There is also a homemade sign that points out that the Silver Lake Lakeites were the state Nine-man champions in 1983 and 1987, and the runners-up in 1984 and 1986.
Buz Rumrill was the coach of this Nine-Man powerhouse. Silver Lake merged school districts with Glencoe, its neighbor 10 miles to the south, for the fall of 1994.
"I was the Glencoe football coach," Dave Dose said. "The athletic director suggested that we could be co-head coaches. I told him, 'Anyone proposing that doesn't know Buz.'" Rumrill became the head coach and Dose was the defensive coordinator.
Another issue in the merger was to select a nickname.
"We had been the Glencoe Eagles," Dose said. "Some Glencoe people thought Silver Eagles would be a good nickname.
"Buz took care of that, too. He said, 'The Eagles are dead.' We became the Glencoe-Silver Lake Panthers."
Rumrill served five seasons as head coach and retired. Dose took over for the next nine seasons, and the Panthers won four Class 3A state championships -- 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2007.
Dose took the two-title winning streak into retirement and was replaced this fall by Scott Tschimperle, his long-time assistant. Tschimperle's father, Dan, was a longtime athletic director at Silver Lake and shares the billing at the town's football field with Rumrill.