By Don Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
There may never have been a weirder Homecoming football game.
When homeless programs Newport and Newport Central Catholic shared their Friday night at Covington Catholic’s Griffin Stadium, they did so with a double Homecoming.
You got that right. Two vagabond teams from Newport left Campbell County, crossed the Licking River and headed to Park Hills to share their Homecoming night in another county in front of a surprisingly large crowd that followed them.
NewCath, the actual home team, held off the introduction of the Homecoming court until halftime allowing Newport’s to be introduced in the pregame ceremonies.
“We’ve had a great relationship with Newport over the years,” said NewCath Coach Stephen Lickert. That’s just what you do.
And soon they’ll both be back home, Lickert said, with Newport Stadium rebuilt soon after its condemnation last year and with NewCath building its own field on top of the hill next to the school. “We’ll be able to alternate home and home games.”
But the pregame introductions were the last thing the injury-plagued, tough-luck Thoroughbreds gave the Wildcats in this Class 1A seeding game. NewCath could hardly afford to. Coming into the game, the Breds knew they would be without 6-foot-4 senior quarterback Kolton Smith, who suffered a eason-ending Lisfranc fracture in his left foot in their last game at Raceland.
And then star tailback Demetrick Welch got busted under the chin in the second quarter, requiring a 45-minute round trip to St. Elizabeth’s in Edgewood to get 10 stitches. That’s about two-thirds of NewCath’s offense gone right there.
Advantage Newport, you would think, despite a 26-game losing streak dating back to 1999 in this neighborhood Newport battle for the Firemen’s Bell. The improved Wildcats came into the game with a better record (4-2) and a higher RPI rating than a 2-4 NewCath team that had played a much tougher schedule.
So again, advantage Newport, you would think. But you would be wrong.
That’s because you couldn’t have guessed how junior Louie Collopy, who had never taken a snap at quarterback until Smith’s injury at Raceland, would step up to the challenge of leading his team to a 22-6 win.
“For a guy who’d never taken a varsity snap, he played great,” said Welch, who called this “a man’s game,” with his 10-stitch sew-up as proof. But despite missing parts of the second and third quarters, Welch still managed to carry the ball 28 times for 104 yards including a 16-yard touchdown.
As for Collopy, he carried it eight times for 35 tough yards and while he completed just one pass, it was a big one – for five yards and the game’s final TD to junior wide receiver Landon Kraft with 3:38 left in the game.
Sounds like Collopy wasn’t all that unnerved about his first start, even though he hadn’t been taking snaps in practice all season. He wasn’t.
“Not really,” Collopy said, “we had a ton of confidence. We lost to good teams. We were due for a win.”
But if Collopy was throwing his first TD pass, he wasn’t alone with an offensive breakthrough. Senior transfer Carter Sleet, having played only on defense, finally got his chance to run the ball with Welch’s injury.
All he did was score his first TD on his first carry, a twisting, turning, running-through-contact, power blast from 16 yards out that saw him escape the arms of a half-dozen Wildcat tacklers to set off a sideline of celebration with 8:09 left in the game to make it 16-6 NewCath.
Next man up and then some. Setting up NewCath’s final TD was a terrifically athletic interception by junior linebacker Noah Ohradzhansky, who started the season as a wide receiver, moved to center when NewCath lost its starter there. But all those wide receiver skills came into play on that interception when he read the eyes and the throw of Newport quarterback Kyle Lee to pick off the ball at the 40 and return it to the 17.
If NewCath took advantage of what Newport’s offense gave it (two interceptions, three sacks for minus 27 yards and a bad snap through the end zone for a safety), Newport’s offense couldn’t make much work for it except an 85-yard TD pass from Lee to Newport’s Game MVP Rodzion Thompson right before halftime.
That was it. On the night, NewCath outgained Newport, 200 yards to 156. Lee hit on 11 of 20 passing for 167 yards but the Newport ground game produced a minus 11 on 12 carries against an inspired NewCath defense.
“You were warriors,” Lickert told his team afterward, “you fought so hard.”
“No matter who we’ve got on the field, we’ve still got to win,” NewCath Game MVP Welch said. No excuses.
And “we found a new running back” in Sleet, Lickert said. “He was a man on fire.”
As for his team, despite the tough start and the injuries, “We got better and all our goals are still in sight,” Lickert said after this opening district win. He also noted how senior wide receiver Mitchell Doeker, who dropped a potential touchdown pass, came back for a key interception as well as pushing a punt out of bounds at the 1, setting up the safety.
But that wasn’t the end of Lickert’s praise. He had some for Newport.
“Coach (Ryan) Hahn is doing a fabulous job,” he said. “We need another good team in our district to make us better.”
Which is exactly what happened at the away-from-home Homecoming Friday, NewCath got better.
SCORING SUMMARY
NEWCATH (3-4, 1-0) 7 2 0 13—22
NEWPORT (4-3, 0-1) 0 6 0 0—6
NEWCATH: Welch 1 run (Roeder PAT)
NEWCATH: Team safety
NEWPORT: Thompson 85 pass from Lee (PAT pass failed)
NEWCATH: Sleet 16 run (Roeder PAT)
NEWCATH: Kraft 5 pass from Collopy (PAT kick failed)