We were sitting in the press box at the start of the Beechwood game in the state baseball tournament at the beginning of June when the KHSAA officials arrived from the just finished Class A Track & Field Championships.
“Did you hear?” they asked. “Your guys won both – Beechwood in the girls’ and Walton-Verona in the boys’.”
We hadn’t heard but we weren’t surprised. Heck, we’d just gotten back from Covington Catholic miraculously rallying to win the state team – and doubles – tennis championships with the team of Alex Yeager and Kalei Christensen down 5-1 in the second set after having dropped the first set.
So no, no surprise. Not in Class A. We – speaking for Northern Kentucky high schools — will fight you in Class A and always have. Here’s all you need to know.
In the history of KHSAA football, Northern Kentucky has sent out six teams classified at the time as Class A and all six – Dayton, Lloyd Memorial, Bellevue, Ludlow, Beechwood and Newport Central Catholic — have won state championships. Current All “A” Classic schools Holy Cross, NewCath and Beechwood also won Class 2A state football titles.
No other geographical region can come close to that record. None ever will.
But as we take one long last look-back at the 2022-23 high school sports year that Terry Boehmker recapped so well here last week, we’ll add a bit of a critique as to how we’re doing here in Northern Kentucky, team-sport-wise.
In a word – or two – we’re doing all right. Doing OK. Some good, some that could be better. But a total of eight team titles out of the 36 the KHSAA offers isn’t bad. That’s 22 percent of the championships for just over 10 percent of the state’s population of 4 million. But it’s not all that consistent from sport to sport, class to class or boys to girls.
Staying with the football theme, here’s the reverse of the small schools’ success. In Class 6A, in its 17 years of existence separately and in all the years before as one of three or four classes, no Northern Kentucky school has ever won the largest school title in football.
But with Highlands and Covington Catholic leading the way, Northern Kentucky has been there most years in the middle groups of changing class structures from 3A to 5A with six of the last 16 Class 5A champs coming from Northern Kentucky. Although like this year, not a titlist in 10 of the last 12 seasons.
Taking a quick look across all six football classes the last 10 years, Northern Kentucky teams have won nine championships. But six of those were by Beechwood. Without the contributions of the Ft. Mitchell school, the rest of Northern Kentucky has just three titles in 54 opportunities– two by CovCath and one by Highlands.
Pikeville, Belfry, Mayfield, Boyle County, Bowling Green and Louisville Trinity each have won as many as or more titles than all the rest of Northern Kentucky. In this era of changing demographics, we’re going to have to depend on the large public schools in suburban/ex-urban Campbell, Boone and Kenton Counties – Simon Kenton, Scott, Campbell County, Ryle, Cooper, Conner, even Diixie Heights – to become competitive for state titles.
And as much as we understand how difficult it is to get up to Trinity’s speed, anyone who watched the Simon Kenton-Trinity playoff game last November would have realized the homestanding Pioneers matched up athlete-to-athlete with Trinity despite losing 51-20, as crazy as that sounds.
In the sport that sets the tone for the school year, Northern Kentucky has work to do. Play more Cincinnati schools. Don’t play down in class – unless you’re playing Beechwood. Start expecting more. And yeah, both Highlands and CovCath have to get back in the mix for state titles.
And maybe football can be the consolidation canary in the coal mine for programs like Bellevue, Dayton and Newport that finished a combined 9-23 last fall including Bellevue’s two forfeits when it ran out of players.
We emphasize football here because it’s the sport – much like in college – that matters the most for the most people – athletes and the community.
But now for the good stuff. And as it should, a Northern Kentucky that pioneered the All “A” Classic competitions to give the smaller schools a shot at state titles without disrupting the classic Sweet 16 basketball concept that makes Kentucky unique, is a place where small schools rule.
As maybe they should. Nine of the 21 Ninth Region schools – no region has more – qualify as the smallest schools in the Commonwealth for competitive reasons. And a reason why Holy Cross almost pulled off an unprecedented double in the All “A” Classic basketball with the girls winning the state title and the boys coming oh-so-close to Louisville power Evangel Christian.
And yeah, that speaks of the qualities that make Northern Kentucky, the state’s second-most populous region, something of a contradiction. Where consolidation has been the watchword for much of the state, not so much here.
Our population growth to the south has added new big schools in Boone County in recent years as it’s taken people away from the schools along the river like Bellevue, Dayton and Newport as well as Holmes and to a lesser extent, Ludlow.
So maybe it’s no surprise that of the eight state titles claimed this year by Northern Kentucky teams, just two – volleyball for Notre Dame and boys’ tennis for CovCath – were in unclassified sports.
Volleyball should probably be the role model for Northern Kentucky sports. From Villa Madonna winning the inaugural title in 1980 to a Sydney Nolan-led Notre Dame Academy winning its 10th title this past fall, to St. Henry’s pair of titles including in 2021, Northern Kentucky girls have won the last three straight over a trio of Louisville schools that have won all the titles the three Northern Kentucky schools haven’t.
That sort of competitive success hasn’t come by accident. The top local volleyball schools expect to win, they develop feeder programs in their grade schools and then they schedule – not just statewide but nationally – for success. And then produce college scholarship prospects year after year.
In softball, Highlands’ Milt Horner, coach of the two-time regional champs, wondered about local scheduling after his Bluebirds’ 3-1 first-round state tournament loss – their second straight – with just one run scored in two games.
Horner admitted that the more his team played Northern Kentucky opponents, the more it hurt the Bluebirds. “One of the challenges for us is that there are only a couple of programs in Northern Kentucky the level we need (to get state competitive),” Horner said. “We travel a lot . . . some of the competition in Northern Kentucky hurts us.”
You almost wonder if that’s a problem across the board for the unclassified sports and larger schools in the classified sports. While small schools playing up is a good thing, large schools playing down is not.
Of the larger county public schools here, only Conner in boys’ cross country, brought back a state title.
No one here competes better than a smallish Beechwood which led Northern Kentucky with three state titles – as mentioned in football and girls’ track and also girls’ cross country.
Has that hurt us at the top end in unclassified basketball while helping smaller basketball schools like Holy Cross, St. Henry and Bishop Brossart who play up? Or even a lower midsize program like Beechwood to win its three state titles across the board.
Recent history doesn’t support that. In the last two decades, Northern Kentucky has had four state boys’ basketball champs – Holmes 2009, CovCath in 2014-2018 and Highlands in 2021. Cooper (2017, Holmes (2008) and CovCath (2004) all made the championship game while Holmes (2007), NewCath (2016), Campbell County (2019) and CovCath (2022) all made the semifinals.
And while girls’ basketball has won just twice in 61 seasons, those two titles have come in the last eight years with Holy Cross winning in 2015 and Ryle in 2019. So good job there even with Cooper’s 70-64 Game 1 elimination this March.
Not sure why there’s the difference in recent football and baseball, where a Beechwood baseball program that could not work harder, could not be coached better, could not produce more state leaders or college-bound prospects, has found itself running into trouble at the state level. In its last two games in the last two state tournaments, Beechwood’s offensive powerhouse was shut out.
“We don’t get shut out,” a puzzled Beechwood coach Kevin Gray said after the loss two weeks ago to Apollo. Except when they do. When they face a top arm from out in the state. Arms you don’t see in Northern Kentucky. Nor when you play the top Cincinnati teams who don’t throw their best in those games.
And as much as Northern Kentucky’s best teams are scheduling downstate, right now it just doesn’t seem enough. While Newport won the first two state baseball titles in 1940-41 and NewCath won four of the next 15 (1946-50-54-56), Northern Kentucky has won just two in the 67 seasons since. And since Holmes’ 1963 title, Northern Kentucky has won only once in 61 seasons, with CovCath in 2002.
And that’s for right here in baseball country, right in the shadow of the world’s first professional baseball franchise.
Soccer is a similar story with just one boys state championship (CovCath in 2015) the lone Northern Kentucky winner in 50 years of KHSAA soccer state titles. The girls, as in volleyball, have done better with seven championships in 31 years including the most recent in 2021 by Notre Dame, which along with Highlands and St. Henry, have titles to their names.
In cross country, while St. Henry with 17 boys’ state titles and Bishop Brossart with 10 lead the way, Highlands, CovCath, Dayton, Conner and Lloyd Memorial all have team titles to their names so success is no stranger there.
In girls’ cross country, Northern Kentucky could not be more dominant with St. Henry (19 championships) and Highlands (11) the Nos. 1-2 in Kentucky history.
In golf, the last titles came 39 years ago for the boys – CovCath in 1984 (also in 1969) in the 83 years of KHSAA play. Notre Dame has four girls’ championships with the last one 40 years ago in 1983 (others in 1979-80-82).
For the boys in tennis, that CovCath title this year was the lone local one in 40 years of team competition. For the girls, Notre Dame has the only three here in 40 seasons (1992, 1998 and 2010).
But in the years since Highlands’ Joe O’Brien won the first singles’ title in 1932, Northern Kentucky has been a factor with Bellevue’s Bob Qualey and Tom Cundy winning in 1945 and 1951 respectively, to interrupt Louisville domination, before Jason Yeager (father of Alex) won it n 1989-90 for Dixie Heights and then CovCath’s Jimmy Roebker (2009-10) and Austin Hussey (2013) won it more recently.
In the 61 years of girls’ tennis, Notre Dame’s Madie Cook in 2012 is the lone Northern Kentucky champ.
And finally, in the 63 years of wrestling, Northern Kentucky has won eight team titles with almost as many runner-up finishes. NewCath won the second title in history in 1961 with Boone County (1979), Conner (1983), Simon Kenton (1987) all winning one each before Campbell County came along to win four – in 1990, 1991, 2004 and 2012.
So there you have it. Some good news, some places that need work. Sports is like that. No time like the summer to get busy for next year.
Dan Weber writes a sports column for the Northern Kentucky Tribune. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @dweber3440.