By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Highlands and Covington Catholic will be district rivals in football once again under the statewide football realignment approved by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association on Wednesday.
The realignment will be for the 2025 and 2026 seasons with high school teams divided into six classes based on enrollments. Highlands will drop from Class 5A to 4A and be part of a district with CovCath, Holmes, Harrison County and Mason County.
Teams remaining in the Class 5A district will be Cooper, Conner, Boone County, Dixie Heights and Scott. Last season, Cooper was state runner-up in Class 5A and CovCath was state runner-up in Class 4A.
St. Henry will play its first varsity season in 2025 as a member of a realigned Class 2A district that will also include Beechwood, Walton-Verona, Bracken County, Gallatin County and Owen County.
The Class 1A and Class 6A districts that include Northern Kentucky teams will remain the same. But Lloyd will move to a new Class 3A district with Bourbon County, Carroll County, Pendleton County and Henry County.
Here is a rundown of district alignments approved for the 2025 and 2026 seasons:
CLASS 1A
District 3 — Bellevue, Dayton, Newport, Newport Central Catholic.
District 4 — Brossart, Holy Cross, Ludlow, Trimble County.
CLASS 2A
District 5 — Beechwood, Bracken County, Gallatin County, Owen County, St. Henry, Walton-Verona.
CLASS 3A
District 5 — Bourbon County, Carroll County, Henry County, Lloyd, Pendleton County.
CLASS 4A
District 5 — Covington Catholic, Harrison County, Highlands, Holmes, Mason County.
CLASS 5A
District 5 — Boone County, Conner, Cooper, Dixie Heights, Scott.
CLASS 6A
District 6 — Campbell County, Great Crossing, Ryle, Simon Kenton
Ludlow’s new girls head basketball coach will be resuming his career
Ryan Bowman will resume his girls basketball head coaching career next season at Ludlow High School.
Bowman, 42, spent four seasons in charge of the Boone County girls program from 2017 to 2021 when his teams compiled a 45-67 record. Before that, he was on the boys basketball coaching staffs at Cooper, Conner and Ryle for a total of 11 years.
He’s taking charge of a Ludlow girls team that posted a 17-14 record and finished first in the Division III conference standings under Blake Clary, who resigned as head coach after two seasons.
The Panthers had mostly seniors in the starting lineup last season. The team’s top returning player is Addy Garrett, a sophomore guard who averaged 15.3 points and 3.9 rebounds per game.
Bellevue baseball program inducts first group into Wall of Honor
The first group of inductees into the Bellevue Baseball Wall of Honor included players from nine previous decades who were honored during a ceremony on Friday.
The list included 1929 graduate John “Bus” Clark and 1938 graduate Bob “Moose” Himmler. They both played before the Kentucky High School Athletic Association made baseball a sanctioned sport in 1940.
Himmler later became Bellevue’s head coach and took the 1947 team to the state championship game. Two players on that team were 1948 graduates Bernie “Sonny” Rechtin and Hershel Hisle, who were also among the inaugural Wall of Honor inductees.
The other inductees and their graduation years are Bob Jones (1958), Mike Swauger (1965), Grant Cofojohn (1974), Doak Schulte (1974), Doug Miller (1983), Lenny Bays (1998), Alex Hegge (2010) and Briley Seiter (2016).