The small-school division of Campbell Conference football was renamed Class D South prior to this season, but they could have just labeled it Quarterback Central.

Long-gone is the day of that position in this league belonging to a game manager whose main concerns are not fumbling the snap or botching the handoff. The top five teams all have one of the top athletes in the state running the show.

“I think it’s kind of the year of the quarterback,” Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan said. “I felt coming into the year that the top two teams were Oak Hill and Winthrop, led by very good quarterbacks, and Lisbon and Dirigo both had a quarterback who could cause an upset. That’s how it has played out.”

With the caveat that all these guys mean infinitely more to their teams than statistics, a quick look at the numbers is staggering, nevertheless:

Dalton Therrien, Oak Hill (2-0): 597 yards total offense and seven touchdowns in two games.

Tyler Halls, Lisbon (2-0): Has either passed, rushed or returned an interception to account for all his team’s scores to date.

Riley Robinson, Dirigo (1-1): 163 yards and 2 TDs through the air against Telstar; 25 carries for 109 yards and 2 TDs at Oak Hill.

Matt Ingram, Winthrop/Monmouth (1-1): Threw a touchdown and orchestrated a Wing-T attack that ran up 311 yards on the ground against Traip.

Kyle Morand, Maranacook (1-0): Ran it 20 times for 132 yards and two TDs in a shutout of Boothbay.

“About five to seven years ago, offense changed because you started to see teams put their best athlete at quarterback. Maybe in the past you would have seen that athlete at tailback,” Oak Hill coach Stacen Doucette said. “With the option and the zone read, now the ball is in the hands of the quarterback 70 percent of the time. I think in the future it’s going to continue.”

Each member of the league’s fab five is arguably the best athlete on his team.

Robinson is a four-year starter on defense and a three-year starter at quarterback. His best sport? Basketball, in which he is likely to approach 2,000 career points.

“We ask a lot of him,” Dirigo coach Jim Hersom said. “We’ve got to develop. We got a little bit stagnant there with what we were doing (against Oak Hill), and we don’t want to be that. I don’t think we can be that. We’ve got to have other kids making a contribution.”

Ingram took over as a sophomore for a team that went 9-1 in 2013 but graduated much of its talent.

He rallied the Ramblers from 0-4 to a playoff berth. Since then, Ingram went about the business of earning his second letter in hockey, contributing as a designated hitter on a baseball team that reached the Class C regional final, and setting a consistent ethic of leadership at football summer camps and in the weight room.

“He’s just more comfortable. Last year as a sophomore, he kind of ran the offense for the seniors. Now it’s his offense,” St. Hilaire said. “He knows all the plays. He’s second in his class. When you tell him the play, he’ll know the formation and where everybody should be.”

Halls was the emergency quarterback for Lisbon as a sophomore. That disaster plan manifested itself when three-year starter Kyle Bourget went down with a knee injury, forcing Halls to shift from flanker and run the Greyhounds’ offense out of what was essentially a rugby-punt formation in the final seven quarters of their playoff run.

Mynahan credits the popular 7-on-7 leagues for promoting Halls’ development. The style of play in that format has strongly influenced the quick-thinking, shotgun-snap offenses that now prevail when the full team is on the field.

“Before 7-on-7, we might go to a camp and of course try to lift (weights), but we might have gotten together as a team for one week,” Mynahan said. “Now we’re together two or three times a week, 12 to 15 times during the summer, and that makes a big difference.”

That extra activity has made it easier for coaches to groom a new quarterback more quickly. Robinson, Therrien, Ingram, Halls and Morand all saw at least some time under center as sophomores, at an age when players at other positions rarely crack the starting lineup.

Doucette’s plan was to have Therrien run every third series for the Raiders that season. He suffered a high ankle sprain that was slow to heal, however, and Oak Hill’s four-year starter, Parker Asselin, got into a productive rhythm. The Raiders kept Therrien at wide receiver and won the first of consecutive state titles.

“Just as important as the football and maybe more important are the leadership qualities you develop in 7-on-7. You assume the responsibility of talking to other kids about mistakes,” Doucette said. “Dalton, in 7-on-7 before his junior year, it became his team, and he got the mechanics of the position and all his reads down. It obviously worked out pretty well for us.”

The skills, smarts and versatility of this quarterback class allow coaches to make in-game adjustments and turn momentum on a dime.

Mynahan’s decision to roll out Halls to the edge of the field on almost every play in the second half allowed Lisbon to rally for a 14-7 win at Winthrop/Monmouth. Hersom put this past week’s Oak Hill game on Robinson’s shoulders, and he nearly rallied the Cougars from deficits of 14-0 and 20-7 before the Raiders escaped thanks to a late fumble recovery.

“Halls has to be the best athlete in the conference. If you have a quarterback who can run the ball, and all those guys can, they immediately become a potential playmaker right from the snap,” St. Hilaire said. “It changes what you tell your defensive ends. ‘When you rush the passer, aim for the outside so he doesn’t get past you.’”

Therrien already has touchdown runs of 59, 60 and 74 yards this season to go with touchdown passes of 60, 42, 25 and 20.

“Dalton is a double threat, I believe,” Doucette said. “He’s a smart football player, a cerebral quarterback. All I ask of him is to put us in a good situation. Don’t run a play where we end up with negative yards.”

It may be a down year for defense in Class D South, if only because coaches are having to install a different scheme each week in an effort to delay the inevitable.

“They’re all different and they’re all good,” Mynahan said. “We’ll have to do some different things when we play Dirigo, because Robinson is so strong. Oak Hill, Therrien brings so much speed. You have to have a game plan for all those things, and they have to have a game plan for us.”

koakes@sunjournal.com