It was Highlands Day at the September inductions for the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame Wednesday. Or maybe Family Day – or Arnzen Family Day. Or even Cincinnati-athletes-moving-to-Northern Kentucky Day.
Whatever, it was fun as seven new Hall of Famers were welcomed from almost every background – athlete, coach, sponsor and family.
And there was good news for those worried about NKSHOF Vice-President and MC Kenney Shields’ absence after a time when the former NKU and Highlands’ basketball coach – Northern Kentucky’s all-time winningest — has been hospitalized with some serious mobility issues. “He’s in Hawai’i,” Pres. Randy Marsh said with a big grin as he subbed for Shields. No way to keep Kenney down.
September’s honorees:
• Bill Roller, the onetime Highlands’ star who played football “from the fifth grade until I was 27” kicked things off by setting exactly the right tone for the two-time Kentucky state champion linebacker and one of the great football players in the illustrious history of the Fort Thomas program. But that’s not where Bill went in his acceptance speech, although he said he very much appreciated his wife putting up with all the football.
“The best guys I played with” in his post-school, Sunday football career, he said, “were from NewCath and CovCath and a lot of them are here today,” even though “both schools didn’t like each other. But sports brings people together which kinda’ ruined our CovCath rivalry now that we all like each other,” he said of the likes of teammates like CovCath alum Rick Hornsby and NewCath guy Dave Guidugli.”
• Newport Central Catholic 2004 alum Michael Zimmerman had something of the same problem. “My 15-year-old brother goes to Highlands,” the two-time Northern Kentucky basketball player of the year said, “and not that I have anything against Highlands, but I have something against Highlands.” Which has him now sitting between the two schools’ sections when they play but he does root for his brother.
And he offered his thanks because this honor validated his basketball claims to his wife, who didn’t meet him until law school after his college career at University of Missouri-Kansas City and had only seen him in alumni games at NewCath – “old man basketball,” he called it. “She thought this was part of an elaborate prank,” Michael said. Now he has proof it was not.”
• Heather Kruger Parsons, also from Highlands where she said her record-setting Kentucky high school basketball star (2,111 career points; 1,523 rebounds and 586 blocked shots) taught her that the ultimate position for understanding what team means is to play in the post where you don’t get to do anything until your teammates get the ball to you.
She thanked and dedicated her honor to her mom and dad along with Highlands as all part of “the Fort Thomas community, such a family community . . . with most thanks to my family who drove thousands of miles to support me.”
Her husband offered the same support, and now she’ll “always be my two sons’ best fan.”
• Bob Boswell Jr. continued the “family” theme as he followed his late father’s induction from earlier in the year and said how much he appreciated it “when people think you are better than you are.” An athlete at Newport High School and longtime sponsor of youth sports teams, Bob relayed stories we can never get too many of – about playing for the iconic Stan Arnzen. One of Arnzen’s tips to him as point guard came in practice one day after he went the wrong way: “I thought . . . “ Boswell started to explain. “Bos, don’t think,” Arnzen responded, “it hurts the team.”
Boswell’s thoughts on the multiple benefits of sports: For one, “you learn to lose,” he said, and figure out how to bounce back. And for now, you realize that days like Wednesday “really contribute to the fiber of our community . . . I want to encourage everybody to stay involved.”
• Kate Arnzen-Kruse (“Another Arnzen?” Marsh asked with a smile) talked of her discovery by Highlands’ Coach Nancy Barre as a young 6-footer perfect for the basketball program where she spent four years as she transitioned to volleyball as her primary sport for her four-year college career at NKU.
“Best decision I ever made,” she said of the early move to sports and “all the amazingly supportive coaches and teachers . . . I had a lot of fun.”
Coaches like Lucy Cecil and Don Dobson “showed me a lot of patience and taught me a lot” and at NKU, Jane Meier likewise didn’t completely lose it on an NKU trip to Pittsburgh when Kate forgot her shoes and all her teammates could come up with were a pair of high-top Converse Chuck Taylors. “Thank you, Arnzen family,” Kate said. And thank you, NKU, where Kate and her husband, and fellow inductee Steve Kruse, met.
• As the first of a pair of Cincinnati high school athletes who came to Northern Kentucky for college and stayed, Oak Hills High School alum Steve Kruse, came to NKU as a distance runner and is now in his 31st year as head track and field and cross-country coach there. “Fortunately, I have my coaching career since I wouldn’t have made it as an athlete,” Steve said, “but I’m constantly reminded by the Arnzen family that I’m an outsider, although my mom is from Newport.”
Steve followed his wife – “the highlight of my NKU career” — and thanked her “for thanking all the Arnzen family already,” with Notre Dame and NBA/pro baseballer Bob Arnzen one of many in the crowd. And concluded with: “I’m in the Hall of Fame now and you can’t take it away from me if I screw it up the last few years I have.”
• Fred Geraci brought his football/basketball/baseball/tennis success from Cincinnati’s Purcell High to Thomas More where he extended the success he and his teammates had — beating Cincinnati as a freshman in basketball, beating Xavier, Dayton and UC in baseball as a pitcher; playing against NBA all-pro Calvin Murphy from Niagara, who scored 49 points against him.
“Thanks, Hall of Fame, I hope my induction doesn’t lower your standards,” Geraci said. In each of those cases, he mentioned how it was a TMU teammate, like catcher Dan Tombragel, who made it possible.
Or maybe a longtime NKSHOF board member Dick Maile, who tutored him as a first-year coach at Purcell. But the best part of sports for Geraci, whose grandson Kiernan Geraci was an all-region basketball player at Dixie Heights and for two years a TMU athlete, was how on Tuesday, as he named them, he’d played golf with “the same guys I played basketball with 52 years ago at Thomas More.” And where he found his wife, Gail, from the warmup line before a TMU basketball game when he told Tombragel, “I think I’m in love . . . I hit a home run there, a three-pointer, a touchdown and outkicked my coverage.”
All photos by Dan Weber/NKyTribune
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dweber3440.