WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – The West Liberty University football team clinched its first outright West Virginia Conference championship since 1971 here Saturday as the No. 12-ranked Hilltoppers sprinted past Seton Hill, 48-21, at Russek Field.

Saturday’s blowout was the 9th straight win for West Liberty (9-1, 7-0) – the longest winning streak in more than a half-century at the school. No. 18 Charleston (8-2, 5-2) was upset by Glenville State on Saturday, leaving the Hilltoppers as the only WVIAC team with less than two league losses heading into the final week of conference play.

West Liberty shared WVIAC titles with Fairmont State in 1979 and 2000. This is the Hilltoppers’ first solo championship since the 1971 team, which advanced to the NAIA national semifinals.

“Winning a conference championship has been one of our major goals since we started here five years ago,” said head coach Roger Waialae as the Hilltopper team began assembling in the end zone to sing the alma mater.

“All the credit goes to the players and my coaching staff. The coaches have done a great job of recruiting the right kids and getting them to play and the players have bought into what we’re teaching and paid the price we’ve asked of them.”

Junior QB Zach Amedro passed for 4 touchdowns, ran for another and went over the 300-yard passing mark for the 10th time this season before halftime as the hosts bolted out to a 34-0 lead.

Amedro opened the scoring with a 39-yard TD strike to Ryan Travis just 63 seconds after the opening kickoff and the Hilltoppers never looked back.

Amedro added a 1-yard touchdown dive midway through the opening stanza and then closed out the half with TD tosses of 9, 16 and 34 yards to junior standout Kashif Walls before the Griffins (1-9, 0-8) finally got on the board in the final minute of the second quarter.

Tailback Kevon Calhoun added a 15-yard TD run in the second half and freshman quarterback Chris Kiedaisch closed out the Hilltopper scoring with a 1-yard dive in the waning minutes.

Wide receiver Eddie Hills led all receivers with 10 catches for 175 yards in what turned out to be a record-setting performance.

Hills, who had back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons as a tailback before making the switch to wide receiver a year ago, broke the school’s career record for all-purpose yardage on Saturday.

The 175 receiving yards gave the senior standout 4,865 all-purpose yards. That broke the previous standard of 4,841 yards set by Derrick Stickles from 2002-05. Hills’ 10 catches gave him 159 career pass receptions – just 2 behind the 161 catches Bill Berg logged as a Hilltopper from 1984-87.

“The best thing about Eddie is that I’ll guarantee you he doesn’t know about the records and wouldn’t care if he did,” Waialae said. “All he cares about is what’s best for the team and what will help us win more football games. We asked him to switch to wide receiver last year and he didn’t even blink. He just went out and led the conference in receiving.

“That’s really been the key to our success. We have a lot of guys who don’t care who makes the plays as long as somebody makes them.”

Amedro completed 23-of-40 passes for 366 yards, pushing his NCAA Division II-leading total of touchdown passes to 37 in the process. Travis finished with 6 catches for 100 yards and a TD while Walls had 5 catches for 75 yards and 3 scores to go over 1,000 receiving yards on the season.

Seton Hill quarterback Nick Monteleone completed 15-of-29 passes for 235 yards and 3 TDs while tailback Antwarn Jones finished with 92 rushing yards on 21 carries in a losing cause.

“We’ll celebrate tonight but we’ll be right back in here Sunday getting ready for a very good Concord team,” Waialae said. “We’ve been in playoff mode since the second game of the season. As long as we keep winning, everything else will take care of itself.”

The interview ended as the final notes of the alma mater were being carried away by the chilly October wind and the Hilltoppers came together for one last cheer before jogging off to the locker room.

“1-2-3…CHAMPIONS!!!!”

Waialae and his coaches may have shouted louder than anyone.