If you’re impressed with this week’s statewide media poll that has a pair of Northern Kentucky/Ninth Region boys’ teams – No. 5 Covington Catholic and No. 6 Newport – or that four local girls’ teams are in the top 12 – No. 3 Cooper, No. 9 Notre Dame, No. 11 Holy Cross and No. 12 Ryle, you’re not wrong.
Newport’s demonstrative basketball coach Rod Snapp hasn’t backed away from challenging his Wildcats. (NKyTribune photo)
No question Northern Kentucky teams across the region’s three counties and public and parochial are getting it done. Good coaches and players working hard and developing young talent against tough competition has real benefits.
But there’s another impressive performance that next week’s All “A” Classic in Corbin highlights. Three of the state’s top 12 boys’ teams will be there starting Jan. 25 – No. 2 Lyon County, No. 6 Newport and No. 12 Evangel Christian. There’s almost certainly no other state where the small schools compete so well against the big boys.
In the Girls’ All “A” State Classic starting Jan. 24, ranked schools don’t have as much a presence with Holy Cross the lone Top 15 school there. But Walton-Verona gives Northern Kentucky two teams there who could meet in Saturday’s 11 a.m. semifinals if both win their first two games.
In the Boys’ tourney, should Newport win its first two games against Lexington Sayre and the winner of Breathitt County-Danville Christian, the Wildcats would almost certainly face the state’s No. 2 team, Lyon County, in the 4 p.m. Saturday semifinals should Lyon get past Owensboro Catholic and then the Augusta/Walton-Verona winner.
Waiting in the lower bracket is the defending All “A” Classic champ, Evangel Christian. For a young Newport team that’s been put to the challenge by Coach Rod Snapp, the 17-3 Wildcats have already faced No. 1 Great Crossing (a 48-46 loss), No. 4 Louisville Trinity (a 76-71 loss in overtime) and No. 5 Covington Catholic (a 73-63 loss). No reason not to make it four of the top five with an 18-1 Lyon County team.
Boone County alum Mike Bramlage
INTERESTING, INFORMATIVE, OFT-INSPIRING NKYSHOF JANUARY INDUCTEES
Too bad the folks in the California Assembly who are debating whether to ban football for under-12-year-olds couldn’t have been here to pick up on some of the wise words of Mike Bramlage, the former Boone County High and Thomas More football star inducted into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame this past week.
Winner of all sorts of academic honors as well, including a scholar-athlete award that earned Thomas More a $10,000 check, the NCAA postgraduate scholarship winner, Academic All-American, and National Football Foundation honoree, Bramlage could not have been more on point.
His mom didn’t want him to play football as a youngster, he said, but he was allowed to do so and played the game for 15 years. He learned “how to be a great teammate, how to do more with less.” And how his life changed when he “met Owen Hauck, a larger-than-life figure who created an atmosphere of excellence,” as a Hall of Fame coach for his work at Highlands and Boone County.
And how one day Mike found himself seated on a dais in New York with the likes of Peyton Manning and Supreme Court Justice – and football All-American — Byron “Whizzer” White. “A long way for a kid from Florence,” Mike thought.
“What you take away from football is what you take with you the rest of your life,” Mike says.
Bellevue’s Steve Crittenden (NKyTribune photo)
Bellevue’s Steve Crittendon said he was “humbled to be here” as the former football/basketball star at Bellevue moved on through a starring career at Defiance College. But it was what came next for Steve that was so interesting, starting with stints in the White House with the Secret Service for both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush before returning home to become assistant chief with the Greater Cincinnati Airport Police Department, now retired.
But it’s the next part of his career for Steve, who has had two daughters go on to college athletic careers. He’s an authenticator for Major League Baseball with 16 years in the Reds’ dugout where he certifies the equipment major league players wear and use. A restaurant owner now, he calls the MLB work his “hobby job.”
Another Bellevue athlete honored was Hallie Hundemer Booth, daughter of Hall of Famer Will Hundermer. She thanked the schools like Scott, which had the lone swimming pool in Northern Kentucky, and Cincinnati St. X where the Cincinnati Marlins allowed the Bellevue swim team to practice. But Hallie pointed out that since she started swimming for Bellevue, she was the swim team. A team of one coached by her principal, who did not know how to swim and was there because there had to be a coach.
Bellevue High’s Hallie Hundermer Booth (NKyTribune photo)
“Don’t ask me anything,” he told Hallie, who would go on to earn a place at the 1988 Olympic Trials.
After losing her swimming career to a shoulder injury, Hallie thanked Rob Harden for giving her the chance to play tennis at NKU before going on to coach at Dixie Heights and Bellevue. “You learn to pivot in life,” she said, thanking her family for always being there for her.
Angela Tullis Hummeldorf has taken her three state softball titles at Newport Central Catholic and KHSAA Player of the Year in 2000 into coaching the Walton-Verona volleyball along with officiating at the top levels of college and national play, that she thanked her husband and three sons for allowing her to do so. Now she’s “looking forward to building a boys’ volleyball program at Walton-Verona.”
Megan Viox Desola took plenty from her track and field days at Conner High where she credited her coach, Buddy Dittus, with instilling something in her from his tough workouts. “Positive mental attitude,” she calls it, a phrase that was everywhere in the program, even painted on the relay batons. “After all these years, I still take those words of wisdom with me,” she said and we’re guessing, passing it on to her three children, all Highlands track and field athletes.
Dayton legend Tom Ferguson, in the familiar hat he’s worn for more than a half-century after he was a top Northern Kentucky football player for the Greendevils in the improbable dual positions – certainly for 145-pounder – of No. 1 running threat at halfback on offense and as a top defender at tackle, said he wasn’t prepared to talk. But he did anyway, and you could see why he left Georgetown College football for the challenge of becoming a paratrooper in Vietnam. And why one of his daughters is now commander of an Air Force base in California. And why all his kids have parachuted out of planes following in his legendary “footsteps.”
Dayton’s Jesse Herbst heard plenty of praise for his dad, and fellow Hall of Famer, Bob Herbst, but the current Dayton head football coach and dean of students, could merely say how “very fortunate, blessed and lucky” he’s been in his more than three decades out of Campbellsville University coaching at Dayton, Simon Kenton and now back home at Dayton, where the new football stadium will be “a game-changer,” he says, for Greendevil football.
Conner’s Amy Michelle Carpenter, a former Marshall University runner and national Junior Olympics competitor, talked of how her “mom would be so proud of her,” after running as a high schooler starting in the eighth grade in track and field and cross-country. “We went all over the country” thanks to her family’s willingness to take her, Amy said.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
NKY Sports Hall of Fame: Angela Tullis, Amy Michelle Carpenter, Megan ‘Viox’ Desola, Hallie Hundermer Booth; (back)Tom Ferguson, Mike Bramlage, Steve Crittendon, Jesse Herbst (Photo by Buddy Dittus)
