By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
March Madness basketball, high school style, is upon us in Kentucky.
In the girls’ Sweet Sixteen matchups, Saturday night saw Sacred Heart crowned as the state champion with a 60-49 win over McCracken County. It was the Louisville school’s fourth straight title, a record.
Newspaper account of 1946 state basketball tourney (Image courtesy of Billie Jo Chaplin)
This week, the boys get started on Wednesday. For many of these teenage participants, it will provide the opportunity to perform their skills in front of huge throngs of people, with the state tournament games occasionally boasting over 10,000 screaming, clapping fans—an early life experience of pressure that can cause some to break down and some to excel.
But mostly, it’s excitement qualified with dreams achieved and dreams — at least for a while — deterred. It’s memory creating, and I believe so in a good way. It’s an important part of the cultural fabric of Kentucky, and I’m all in on it.
I never played on a school basketball team in high school, mainly because I wasn’t very talented. I was well aware of the sport, though, and enjoyed watching and reading about it. When I was a small child, my parents followed the Pendleton County Wildcats boys’ teams, even though our family lived in next-door Campbell County.
Mom grew up in Pendleton, and Dad understood her passion to support those almost always scrappy teams and whose players belonged to families she knew. So, in the winter when the Wildcats were playing, it wasn’t unusual for our family to attend, in the Falmouth gym, and sometimes when they played on the road.
As the Flairty family got busier with a small farm we bought in Claryville, we phased out the basketball trips to Falmouth, but my Kentucky high school basketball interest continued. I read all I could find in the newspapers.
Steve’s cousin Lindsey Bray as Campbell County player (Photo courtesy of Lindsey Bray)
I recall listening to state tournament games on radio station WHAS when such stars as Wesley Unseld and Butch Beard, future NBA players, were stars. And when I entered Campbell County High School as a student, the Camels became my favorite rooting interest, though they didn’t make the state tourney during my time there.
For me and many others, the game has been a way of connecting. As a public-school teacher in the late 1970s, I enjoyed going to the state tournament action in Louisville with my first principal, Melvin Howard. It helped build our relationship and was a psychological boost for me in those early years of teaching.
The school year 1980-81 was especially memorable for basketball reasons. It was the only year I taught at the high school level, at George Rogers Clark (GRC), in Winchester. I knew the girls’ coach pretty well, and we often talked hoops. One day before the season started, he mentioned to me that he had an opening for an assistant coach on his staff and asked if I’d be interested in the position. I’d never coached, though at the time I was involved as a statistician with EKU men’s hoops.
Scared to death and wondering if I was qualified, I said yes. For sure, I had a steep learning curve to climb, and I confronted it while navigating a full special education teaching load. I learned a lot because I didn’t have a choice.
In short, it was a challenging experience but perhaps the saving grace of an otherwise difficult teaching year. It was exciting, as I was a part of a team that won over thirty games and was rated #1 in the state for most of the season. Picked to win it all, we stumbled in the semi-finals of the state tournament at Richmond. It was a devastating loss, one for which I still carry a slight sting.
That “sting” aside, I’ll never regret coaching that year. I developed great relationships and enough inspiration to see me drop down a level and coach middle school girls’ basketball for twelve years afterward, a sort of second career. It was invigorating to know that I was helping impart life skills to young people, and for some preparing them to play basketball on a highly competitive level in high school.
Another connecting experience happened over three decades later, which I previously wrote about in this column. Two second cousins, Reid and Grant Jolly, played for my beloved Campbell County, and I shared in the article about how their deceased grandfather — my Uncle Donnie — would have been “bustin’ buttons” proud. The Jolly boys helped bring a level of success die-hard fan Uncle Donnie hadn’t seen in his own life. Incidentally, Reid later played college basketball at Thomas More, in Northern Kentucky, and excelled.
I’m also proud that three other cousins played high school basketball. Jennifer Johnston (now Pierce) played for Pendleton County. Taylor Jolly, sister of Reid and Grant, played for Campbell County and later Thomas More, and another cousin, Lindsey Bray, also played for Campbell County and Thomas More. She has coached in Pendleton and Campbell counties. Though I lacked the skills to play ball, happy to say some in my bloodline had them.
As the boys’ Sweet Sixteen gets underway this week at Rupp, I am excited that those beloved Camels will be playing on Thursday at 8:30. They have a tough opponent, Newport High, another Northern Kentucky team. I’ll also be pulling for Great Crossing, who has a player, Malachi Moreno, who is a brother to Michael Moreno, my favorite EKU Colonel.
It’s all about connections.
High school basketball supplies me with a generous supply of Kentucky by Heart sustainable moments, now and from the past. I suspect many of you who’ve been in these parts feel those moments, too. And if you are a recent transplant to the state, I hope you will soon embrace the hoops culture, too — even if it’s only a force to bring us closer together.
