By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Covington Catholic basketball player Neil Green was planning to pick up his duties as student council president after the Colonels returned from the “Sweet 16” boys state basketball tournament in March.
That was before the new coronavirus pandemic hijacked the final weeks of Green’s senior year, as it did for students all across Kentucky and the entire nation.
Last week, Kentucky’s governor announced that all schools will be closed to in-person instruction for the rest of the semester and traditional graduation ceremonies will have to be conducted online. In the wake of that announcement, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association officially canceled all sports-related activities, including the boys and girls state basketball tournaments that had been suspended in March.
That was a double dose of disappointment for countless student-athletes throughout the Commonwealth, especially high school seniors like Green.
“From the beginning of the year, when you put so much work into everything you’re doing and you have such high hopes for all we planned as a senior class and on the basketball team, it would’ve been nice to have some true closure to it all,” he said.
After being named most valuable player in the 9th Region tournament, Green was looking forward to ending his basketball career playing in the “Sweet 16” boys state tournament at Rupp Arena. The 6-foot-6 forward was CovCath’s leading scorer in all three regional playoff wins. In the championship game against Highlands, he posted a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds.
During the regional tournament, Green wore a compression sock on his left calf muscle that he strained late in the regular season. He still managed to total 49 points and 17 rebounds in three games while shooting 71.4 percent (20 of 28) from the field with a few rim-rattling slam dunks.
“Once region started I really did start to come back from that (calf injury) and get it out of my head and just put myself completely back into it,” Green said. “I was really excited for the state tournament. It really felt like a year that we could make it ours.”
After the state basketball tournaments were suspended, schools began closing and stay-at-home orders were soon issued. As student council president, Green decided to post a video on YouTube to share his feelings with the CovCath community.
“All of us right how just feel a little bit lost in it all,” he said. “That’s why I said in my video this is just the moment that’s presented to us and we’ve got to continue to be CovCath students. We’ve got to continue to represent what we always tried to represent — to be good to people we do see and reach out to people we can’t see.”
Green is among the top students in the CovCath senior class. He will continue his education at Purdue University and plans to major in engineering. He’s enrolled in the Honors College, which promotes collaborative learning and leadership development.
“I’m very excited, and a little nervous to go up there,” he said of the next step in his education. “They’re an intimidating group of people. Hopefully, they’ll help me out when I need it.”
Since he and his CovCath classmates will not get to celebrate graduation together this spring, Green would like to organize a ceremony sometime in the future. His motivation to do that will resonate with 2020 graduates from any high school.
“I couldn’t be prouder of what our class has accomplished, the competitiveness and how hard we all worked to get where we are,” he said. “That’s one of the parts about all this that’s hurting me the most. The fact that everybody worked really hard and should be getting their diploma up on that stage.”