By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Maybe it was bringing the Vories’ and Boswell families together. Maybe it was just Newport Day. Certainly, it was the storytelling that happened at Wednesday’s Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame inductions.
And was responsible for, as Pres. Randy Marsh called it, “the record for the longest induction ever.”
Maybe it was how no families have had a longer ride at the front of the Northern Kentucky sports parade than those of the Newport pair of Roland Vories and Bob Boswell Sr. I knew them as a kid growing up in Ludlow. How? I have no idea. I just did. If you cared about sports in these parts, you knew them.
Roland Vories
Roland, the Coca-Cola executive and former Newport mayor and Campbell County commissioner, had overseen the best early Northern Kentucky Knothole teams – and pitched for the first World’s Champion slow-pitch softball champs – Shields Realty. And sponsored just about everything there was to sponsor. He’s already an inductee but his sons, Kent and Gary, were this month’s honorees.
BOB BOSWELL SR. was a “champion for youth sports,” the NKSHOF described him, from top Knothole teams to providing opportunities for underprivileged youth to play after his 1947 Newport High graduation. Accepting for his father was Bob Jr., who said “this is like a family reunion for me,” with the Vories’ clan in attendance.
“They were mentors,” he said of Roland Vories and his father volunteering thousands of hours of their time to helping young people. “Dad was one of those guys.” We remember Bob Sr.’s volunteer work for us when we started NKU athletics and he was an early booster trustee as well as doing the PA for basketball games, something Bob started doing at Newport High.
KENT VORIES, would be mostly responsible for the record length with his at-times self-deprecating stories from his grade school days, his semipro baseball days, his high school playing and coaching days, his softball days and his more than 20 years of refereeing days.
Kent also had a show-and-tell box with a signed baseball from his Newport team’s 4-2 upset of Newport Central Catholic, the first time the Wildcats won in decades, as he proved his wife’s description of him: “the biggest hot dog she ever saw.” No arguments from anyone here – although lots of laughs — as Kent produced t-shirts from his junior high, JV, varsity, boys’ and girls’, Kentucky and Ohio, coaching tenures – “a program builder,” he called himself of how he’d get things going and move on.
BROTHER GARY VORIES – and before we forget it, both Kent and Gary (“Gee”) were younger brothers of the late Dick Vories, the Newport High and Georgetown star who finished his career as the greatest college basketball scorer in Kentucky history – may have had the best stories. But that’s because he played for the one-of-a-kind pair of Stan Arnzen at Newport and Dr. Bob Davis at Georgetown College, whose claim to fame was not finishing a Georgetown practice “until someone draws blood.”
NKSHOF March inductees Terry Saccone, Steve Meier, Bob Boswell Jr. and Jennifer Armstrong Vertress; (back row) Gary Vories, Mark Krebs, and Kent Vories. (Photo by Dan Weber/NKyTribune)
In one of his first college years, Gary recalled how he was heading down to see when they should start warming up for the rivalry Transylvania game only to see the coaches from the two teams literally wrestling in the hallway outside Davis’ office. “This isn’t high school anymore,” Gary told himself.
But high school with the legendary Arnzen was as interesting and fun as it gets. Gary told of heading down to the state tournament in Louisville in 1962 and with a Ninth Region champion team, led by the multi-talented Eugene Britton Carter in the back and the coaches up front, when they were told that there’d be a stop at Manual High for practice. Which caused the team captain to come to the front and whisper something to the coaches about maybe not everybody having their equipment bags with them.
In response, Arnzen came back to lecture his players on how they had to be responsible and that anyone without his equipment would not practice. A few minutes later, the captain went back up front to whisper to the coaches again. Arnzen soon returned to the back of the bus with this follow-up: “Eugene, what size shoes do you wear?”
TERRY SACCONE ended the Newport Wildcat induction parade and the world-famous bowler, who is approaching making his 48th straight national championships at Las Vegas this year with a goal of 50 straight – only 300 bowlers in history have ever done it – thanked his parents “for always being there” as he accomplished feats like winning more than 50 local, state and national tournaments, compiling a 54-year average of 215, of having bowled more than 50 perfect 300 games or even more amazing, having bowled a 300 game and an 800 series in six decades – from the 1970’s through the 2020’s. “It’s been a great ride,” Terry said.
MARK KREBS continued the Newport theme, but the Corpus Christi kid took his talents to Newport Central Catholic and then-Villa Madonna College before becoming head basketball coach at both NewCath and Newport. Amazingly as a Villa Madonna pitcher, he recorded wins over Miami (Ohio), NKU and Xavier in a two-week period once. Much credit, Mark said, was to his coaches like Jim Weyer at VMC and Bob Schneider at NewCath, and his late wife, who survived 10 years of stage IV cancer and got to see son, Mark, play basketball at UK. “I shot, and shot a lot,” Mark said of a 19.7 ppg average for his high school career. “Blame Carl Foster (former coach and principal),” he said. “He told me to “Shoot’ and shoot I did.”
JENNIFER ARMSTRONG VERTRESS may be a 1983 Lloyd Memorial alum but really, she says, she got her start at a track meet in Newport as a grade schooler. So the theme continues. She starred in the hurdles, dashes and relays. And while she said her knees had taken her as far as they could six years ago, she can still hear the encouragement of “PMA . . . Positive Mental Attitude” and “Push” in her ears as she moves on through life recalling the joy of running with her two sisters and the memory of her parents spending “hours sitting on cold bleachers” watching them run.
STEVE MEIER was at home, just two minutes in either direction from the induction at The Arbors in Park Hills from his grade school days at St. Agnes and high school days at Covington Catholic. But it wasn’t geography that benefited Steve so much as a history that had these four as his high school basketball coaches – Ralph Bogenschutz, Hep Cronin, Mote Hils and Dick Maile. “I don’t think anybody could have four better coaches,” Steve says. He also had legendary MLB scout Larry Grefer as his St. Agnes coach. Steve would then move on to NKU as a member of the school’s second-ever basketball team and there he would stay, managing intramurals and health facilities, serving on the NKU Athletic Council for more than 30 years and becoming dean of students and a regent. The husband to former NKU AD and multi-sport coach Jane Meier, Steve worked with the late Stan Steidel to give the early All “A” Classic a place to play at NKU’s Regents Hall. “You could never find a better gentleman,” former NKU head basketball coach and NKSHOF vice-president Ken Shields said of Steve.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
