High school and college sports in Northern Kentucky would certainly have survived without the lifelong dedication and participation of Benny Clary and Rick Meyers.
But the sports we know and love would probably not be the same. Not be in as good a place.
That’s because no one has been more a part of high school sports in Northern Kentucky for longer than Ludlow’s Clary. Nor has anyone been more a part of the history of college sports here than Meyers, a Ft. Thomas-to-Edgewood guy.
In fact, it’s safe to say that no person has ever been involved with more high school sports events from games to practices, from making them happen to watching them happen, than Clary. Indeed, a case could easily be made that no one has seen more high school sports events here than the upbeat Clary has, officially and unofficially, in his nearly seven decades of doing it.
Ditto for Meyers, at the college level, for more than a half-century. He was there almost from Day 1 — or at least Year 2 — at NKU in every way you can be involved: as a freshman student assistant, then full-time sports information director, Conference and University PR guy and then official scorer, a role he’s performed faithfully at NKU for the last 25 years, working on a press row at Truist Arena with a plaque honoring Benny Clary’s 33-year NKU run as official scoreboard operator.
But don’t think this pair was limited to Highland Heights. Clary moved on to incorporate official basketball timer duties at Xavier as well for a while. Meyers added Thomas More basketball to his resume then followed with fill-in responsibilities at Xavier.
How do we know this? From my first days as the youngest, and probably heaviest, grade school pee wee football player in Ludlow playing for Coach Clary, it seems he was just always there. Young as I was, I thought he was an adult. But Benny put together his Ludlow pee wee team as a high school senior.
“I still remember the green-and-white jerseys,” he says. Neither of us can remember who we played or where, even when. “I think maybe Sundays,” Benny says.
He was there then. He’s there nearly seven decades later even if at 86, his schedule is more watching grandkids play than working the games.
But working indeed, in his own way, from the crowd to the officials, in the best interpretation of that word. Not a minute goes by at a game with Benny than someone doesn’t come by to shake his hand, tell him a story or just say “Hi” to an old friend.
Watching a high school tournament basketball game with him, as I discovered this past winter, is like sitting next to the Pope in a room full of Monsignors. It can only be described as a moment for one set of officials after another, all of whom grew up at games with Benny’s welcoming face at the scorer’s table, to kiss his ring.
“I do think the officials always liked coming to Ludlow,” he says, “they didn’t have to worry about the scoreboard.” And if there’s a distinction he has, Benny says, it’s that “I’ve put up more points on the scoreboard than anyone maybe ever – and I haven’t scored a basket.”
And yes, we were able to observe Benny at both NKU and Xavier because we were lucky enough to be able to hire him to run the scoreboard from our time as sports information director at both places.
The same for Meyers who went from our student assistant keeping stats, recommended highly by his St. Thomas High coach Kenney Shields, to sports editor at The Northerner to full-time SID despite ripping NKU in his final undergraduate column for not having a full-timer there.
He remembers telling his fellow staffer at the next desk, Gary Webb, the controversial investigative reporter, famed NKU alum and the subject of the movie Kill the Messenger played by Jeremy Renner, that he’d just torpedoed any chances of getting his dream job. Webb agreed that he probably had. But soon after graduation, Rick was offered the chance to go full-time as SID . . . and he took it.
After becoming NKU’s university information director a decade later, Rick stayed in sports as the PR person for the Great Lakes Valley Conference for 17 years as it went national with two straight NCAA Division II national championship basketball game appearances for NKU under Shields.
All sorts of sports honors would follow in his now 51st year on the NKU sidelines. He’s an NKU and Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Famer as well as in the GLVC’s.
Clary expanded his game-watching for sons Mark and Mike, both who have worked as coaches at Beechwood, and daughter Margaret and their seven children. No great-grandchildren are playing yet. But when they are, Benny, who coached football, baseball and basketball youth teams for 20 years, will be there.
As to his high school games, Benny figured maybe 60 a year – basketball, football and baseball — at Ludlow for 50 years. Then he remembered he hadn’t included the girls in those numbers. “It’s so hard to say,” he says of our total of somewhere approaching 4,000 when you factor in all the tournaments.
Both also moved on across the river to the Reds and the Bengals, Meyers as a stat man for the Bengals and a season-ticket holder for the Reds since 1988 with a string of 50 straight Opening Days until this spring when a knee injury doing yard work kept him home.
Clary would become the senior ticket-taker for the Bengals and then the Reds starting in 1970 when Riverfront Stadium debuted. He would work 48 years for the Bengals, 46 for the Reds doing all the scheduling and assigning of ticket-takers on a game-by-game basis.
“It did keep me busy,” he says of those duties added to the 33 years at NKU (1970-2003) and 50 years at Ludlow (1960-2010). All of which has been recognized with his induction into five halls of fame – Northern Kentucky Sports, Ludlow, Kentucky Veterans, Northern Kentucky Youth Football and Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors.
For Meyers, it was a labor of love. “When I was doing my GLVC duties, if there was a game in Louisville at Bellarmine and NKU was off, I might drive down there,” he says. His GLVC crew was responsible for the NCAA Division II Championship finals for eight years.
Asked to guess-timate how many college games he’s been involved in, Rick said maybe he could come up with a number if he sat down and went year by year but all he can say right now is “a lot.”
He’s been a part of the national championship TMU women’s basketball team’s three-year NAIA championship game run as official scorer. And working the high-profile nationally televised Xavier games has been a different sort of challenge.
“You just get to know people after all the years in this business and they call you,” Rick says of his expanded sidelines work.
And most of the time, like Benny Clary, he went off to work when they called.
Dan Weber writes a sports column for the Northern Kentucky Tribune. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him @dweber3440 on Twitter.