It’s almost always one of the bigger nights in Northern Kentucky sports. But Thursday’s Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors’ Hall of Fame Induction banquet was bigger than that.
Bigger, even, than the 21 new Hall of Famers and three special awards winners from 19 different schools. Because the honors didn’t stop there.
Bigger than ever with the sold-out crowd of 337 at Receptions in Erlanger, the largest of the 42 annual affairs. And for the second straight year, women Hall of Famers outnumbered the men.
An amazing 65 attendees came from small school Bishop Brossart with a pair of honorees. And with another inductee in three-sport star Mike Gullett, small school Bellevue High maintained its top spot for most Hall of Famers with 69 over the years.
Which is a point that former President Ron Madrick echoed, lauding how well in his 17 years with the ADs’ association, Northern Kentucky has handled the balance between male and female athletes and between the large and small schools. And exactly how well former longtime broadcaster Don Weber handled the presentations once again.
You couldn’t miss the balance as one after another award winner was named: Everyone is welcome, everyone is eligible. Including a pair of posthumous winners – Frank Pangallo, shortstop for those great Newport Central Catholic baseball teams in the mid-1950’s and Williamstown’s Arnie Risen, the 6-foot-9 NBA Hall of Famer with a terrific 13 1/2 -year career and two NBA titles to his credit.
A perfect pairing. Pangallo’s son, Rocky, was one of eight children of a father who was himself one of 16. “I have more than 100 first cousins,” Rocky said before describing the sheer joy of locating a 1954 film of his dad’s NewCath team winning a state championship over Louisville Male for Jim Connor.
Risen, who was in the group of NBA players who first made it onto national TV and made themselves household names for basketball fans, has only recently gotten introduced to Northern Kentucky sports fans as one of their own.
One way that’s happening is through the “Northern Kentucky Sports Legends of the 1950’s” book by former Bellevue coach Charlie Coleman who had them for sale here. Great Christmas gift for a Northern Kentucky sports fan.
And there must be something about Bellevue because another former coach there, sports historian Mike Swauger, does such great work putting together the collector’s quality 48-page annual program with all the current Hall of Fame bios and great photos and history notes through the years.
“Everything revolves about family, teammates and coaches,” Madrick said, “nobody gets anywhere by ourselves.”
It was a theme. The way great golfer Lori Oldendick Eberle, from Boone County High, was able to weave together the story of how her older brother, Bruce, left her his state championship jacket as a daily motivation, which it was until she won her own state title – the only time a brother-sister pair has done that. And then there were the eight Northern Kentucky Women’s Amateur titles with her dad, Tom, on the bag for one of those and her mom, sharing a flight title with her at another N. Ky. Women’s Am’s.
Silver Grove’s Chris Smith led Northern Kentucky in scoring two years and had a son, Derek, and a daughter, Bev, who both did the same in their high school days. But Chris, who signed up with the Army after high school and served in Vietnam before 59 years of marriage to his wife, Carolyn, and 42 years of working on the railroad, laughed at those days. “It was a long time ago,” Chris said, “but a hell of a ride.”
Highlands’ four-sport star Megan Arnzen Krieg demonstrated her professional public speaking expertise in an impassioned talk about family – with a famous athlete father in Bob Arnzen, the Notre Dame and NBA guy and a non-athlete mother who she calls her “greatest coach” in a family that still pickle-balls together.
In another kind of family connection, Beechwood swimmer Krissie Almeida Brandenburg, an eight-time All-American and two-time Kentucky Female Swimmer of the Year, noted how another 2025 inductee, Connor’s Karen Turner Chitwood, winner of seven state swimming titles in her four high school years on the way to an LSU scholarship and the 1980 US Olympic Trials, coached her and still coaches the Northern Kentucky Clippers today.
Other Hall of Fame Inductees are: Ricky Atkins, who did it all in baseball for Newport High and still coaches more than 40 years later; Nicole Chiodi, Newport Central Catholic, a four-year record-breaking basketball starter before an NKU starring career; Brad Cooper, Simon Kenton, leader of one of Kentucky’s greatest wrestling families and one of the all-time most accomplished wrestlers here; Amy Franks Garner, St. Henry, soccer, track and basketball and athlete at Wright State; Tim Grogan, Covington Catholic, star football quarterback and four-year baseball starter for the Colonels’ state champion 2002 team; Brandon Hatton, Dixie Heights, a varsity player from the seventh grade on, he started 153 games, scoring 3,045 points in an all-state career at Dixie; Allison Long Butler, Conner, who scored 1,500 points for a Conner team that would win a regional title, then on to Thomas More and a return as a math teacher and coach at her alma mater; Cary Page, Conner, a power-hitting all-state baseball player (hit .506 his senior season with 10 home runs) who went on to star at both Morehead State and Western Kentucky; Ron Russell, Dayton, started four years for the Greendevils while finishing up with senior averages of more than 25 points a game and 19 rebounds; Jodi Schmidt, Ludlow, loved volleyball so much she’s coached it for 25 years now at her alma mater and can’t imagine doing anything else; Deann Schroeder Kiefer, Bishop Brossart, won a state championship in the high jump and helped turn the Mustangs into a girls’ basketball power before going on to block an NAIA record 569 shots in her career at Mt. St. Joseph; Dawn Sparks Kinner, Campbell County, a terrific volleyball and basketball athlete who went on to a volleyball career at Georgetown before becoming an administrator and volleyball coach at Paintsville High; and Tasha Tanner-Lovins, Ryle, who returned to her alma mater for a 25-year girls’ volleyball coaching career with more than 500 wins while also teaching math.
Coming in for special recognition from all sides on this night was Grady Brown, the former Silver Grove and NKU baseball player and Newport baseball coach along with his late brother, Ray, and now a Newport administrator who took up the duties of overseeing this event after the passing of Mel Webster in 2022. While Mel made this event what it is, Grady has taken it to another level as Thursday’s attendance numbers make clear.
Special award winners: the late Edwin Schultz of Bishop Brossart for the Tom Potter Distinguished Service Award for all the dedicated family farmer did for the Mustang baseball program over the years.
Holy Cross’ Evie Thomas, who led her Holy Cross softball team to a first-ever regional title and state tournament appearance won the Mel Webster Scholarship Award.
And finally, winner of the Stan Steidel Distinguished Administrator Award to retired Dayton superintendent Jay Brewer, who has accomplished all sorts of things with his campus restructuring whose centerpiece is the new Dayton High Greendevil Football Stadium. But maybe his best qualification is that he’s the son-in-law of Kenney Shields, the winningest basketball coach in Northern Kentucky history at St. Thomas, Highlands and NKU, who was Jay’s “mentor,” he said — and the final name we heard.
“Coach, we love you,” Madrick said to Shields, high praise for a man who won all those basketball games. Normally, you can be the winningest coach or the most beloved coach, but not both.
Kenney Shields is the exception in Northern Kentucky that proves the rule. And the perfect ending for this 42nd annual Hall of Fame night.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.