By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
The Cooper fans were not happy. Not only were their unbeaten, top-ranked Class 5A Jaguars losing 17-7 in the final 30 seconds of the first half, they were heading to the locker room.
Plenty of time to run one, maybe two plays from their own 40-yard line, they reasoned.
“What are we doing?” one yelled out.
What were you doing, Randy Borchers, the only coach Cooper has ever had in its football history, was asked.
“We weren’t playing very well,” Borchers said. Better to head into the locker room and talk it over. Or more exactly, Borchers was doing the talking, it was up to his 13-0 team that had barely been challenged this season – except for the first Highlands’ game – to do the answering.
“Are we a championship team or not?” Borchers asked them.
They decided they were, but not with their words. With 20 points in a 3:14 span early in the third quarter as the Jags were just getting started. And 27 in 4:44. And 34 in 6:44.
For those keeping score at home, that Highlands’ 17-7 halftime lead was now a 41-17 deficit. And there were nearly four minutes to play in the third quarter in a game that would end up: Cooper 61, Highlands 23. Again, do the math. That’s a 54-point second half for a Cooper team that scored just seven the first half.
And those points were coming from names and numbers you don’t often see and hear out Union way, at least not producing points. Like running back Ryker Campbell, a 5-foot-6, 150-pound senior listed as a WR/DB on the Cooper roster.
Ryker came into this game leading the Jags in tackles and interceptions. He left it almost leading Cooper in tackles, again, with six and a sack in his one interception was bested only by Isaac Brown’s two.
But that’s not the stat line that told the most about how Ryker Campbell stepped up Friday night after learning that Cooper would be without leading rusher, Keagan Maher, with 1,433 yards on the ground and 22 touchdowns. Maher’s fractured index finger would not allow him to play.
“It was crazy,” Campbell said of learning Thursday that the Jags backfield would have to play “next man up,” Ryker said. And he was the next man.
And did he ever step up. Three touchdowns and 106 yards on 10 carries – one in the first, a second in the third from 43 yards out and a final one in the fourth.
“We felt like we’d be OK,” Borchers said. “That’s the thing about this team – we have depth. Mason Stanton also came in and ran it as well” with his 20 yards on seven carries with a TD.
The team that had lived on the arm of Cam O’Hara to wide receivers Isaiah Johnson and Jaidan Combs and tight end Austin Alexander could survive with them not in the lead roles on this night. But significant roles, for sure, in that 54-point second half.
O’Hara overcame a slow start to finish with 14 for 25 passing for 279 yards and four TDs against one interception – just his third of the season against 49 TD passes.
Combs had one three-play sequence where he scored on a 61-yard quick hitch where he just outran the Highlands’ defenders, then recovered a fumble on the kickoff and caught a 16-yard pass to put Cooper in position for an O’Hara-to-Alexander TD pass from the 10 in that third-quarter onslaught. That was Alexander’s second TD catch. And then leading receiver Johnson did his thing, catching a 69-yarder from O’Hara that had Johnson, like Combs, just outrunning defenders.
Veteran Highlands’ coach Bob Sphire said “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like that . . . a tale of two different halves.” And of “how much it hurts to see a senior class that has done so much for this program in their four seasons have to go out with people thinking about the last 20 minutes.”
But that’s how tough this game can be with the 11-3 Bluebirds – one of the nation’s Top 10 winningest high school programs of all time – exiting this season one game short of the state championship that will now be a replay of last year’s Bowling Green-Cooper finals.
“But you can’t turn the ball over like that,” Sphire said of Highlands’ four lost fumbles and three interceptions. “We had that first one (in the second half) and then it just started to roll.”
As did Cooper, with recoveries in the end zone and on kickoffs and almost everywhere the ball went in this one. Except that wherever the loose ball ended up, it ended up in the hands of Cooper defensive end Mike Mulvihill, a 6-1, 217-pound senior with a large personal fan group in a crowded stands where Cooper fans didn’t let the 27-degree weather with the 20-mph gusts chase them home on this frigid night.
Maybe “20 people,” Mulvihill said of his personal cheering section, “the whole town of Blanchester (Ohio),” where he moved from to Boone County last year.
For the season, in 13 games, Cooper had recovered a total of eight fumbles. Mulvihill claimed one of those. In this game, Mulvihill came up with four including that one in the end zone in the third quarter on a snap over Highlands’ quarterback Rio Litmer’s head.
It wasn’t so much him finding the football, Mulvihill said, “the football found me.” But that doesn’t happen unless you’re in the right place. Which Mulvihill, and his Jaguar teammates, were.
Litmer, a junior game manager for the Birds, completed 26 of 44 passes for 245 yards and two TDs with two interceptions. And with 352 yards of offense to Cooper’s 394, and 27 first downs to Cooper’s 22, Highlands had some favorable numbers.
But those seven turnovers proved fatal against the 14-0 Jags, who will attempt to atone for last season’s 28-14 championship game loss to a Bowling Green team that beat South Warren, 31-28, Friday. The Class 5A title game will kick off at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at UK’s Kroger Field. That game will follow the 6A championship where the other Union team, Ryle, will face Louisville trinity at 4 p.m.
SCORING SUMMARY
HIGHLANDS 0 17 6 0—23
COOPER 7 0 34 20—61
Cooper: Campbell 4 run (PAT) Tibbs kick good
Highlands: Nickelman 18 (FG)
Highlands: Surrey 2 run (PAT) Nickelman kick good
Highlands: White 9 pass from Litmer (PAT) Nickelman kick good
Cooper: Alexander 27 pass from O’Hara (PAT) kick fails
Cooper: Campbell 3 run (PAT) Tibbs kick good
Cooper: Fumble recovery in end zone Mike Mulvihill (PAT) Tibbs kick good
Cooper: Combs 61 pass from O’Hara (PAT) Tibbs kick good
Cooper: Alexander 10 pass from O’Hara (PAT) Tibbs kick good
Highlands: Arnold 31 pass from Litmer (PAT) pass fails
Cooper: Campbell 43 run (PAT) kick fails
Cooper: Johnson 69 pass from O’Hara (PAT) Tibbs kick good
Cooper: Stanton 2 rush (PAT) Tibbs kick good