They came from different eras, different sports, and with all sorts of stories, to the January induction for the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame Wednesday at The Arbors in Park Hills.
• Sharon Menning, out of Newport’s Our Lady of Providence, is not only a champion trap shooter, but a champion of the sport for the next generation. She started in the 1970s at the Bob White Club where she met her husband, Dennis, “who fell in love with it,” Sharon says of trap shooting. She’s recorded a 98 out of 100 score in national competition to become the High Lady scorer as well as hitting 25 straight in another. And even after surgery on her right eye limited her to shooting left-handed, she has kept on with the sport – especially as a coach and state director for the Kentucky Youth Trap Shooting Program.
“We had five (shooters) our first year and now it’s up to 60 from five counties,” Sharon says of a program that’s totaled “more than 2,000 overall” now in what will be the couple’s 25th year running the program in 2025. “Integrity – and skill – are the goals of the program,” Sharon says.
• Lloyd Memorial’s Chris Gillum was a basketball guy even though he would star in three sports for the Juggernauts back in 1990-91. “I liked basketball,” Gillum says. “But I’m glad my friends talked me into playing football . . . the huddle is the best thing.” Good thing they did. Switching to an up-tempo passing offense, the Juggs gave Gillum a chance to break all the school’s passing records, finish second in the state in passing and advance for the first time in two decades to the Class 3A playoffs, a credit to his coaches, Marc Otto and Mike Burns.
A two-time MVP in basketball as a 1,000-point career scorer and near-90-percent free throw shooter, Gillum had to give up his third sport – golf – when they switched it to a fall sport his senior year.
• Don Hilker is a bowler. And how. For 50 years, the Newport native who got his start at the legendary Glenn Schmidt’s Lanes in the middle of town, has averaged 200. OK, he dropped to 199 last year. But as a competitor/coach/sponsor/owner, Don has done it all and then some. “But I didn’t consider myself any sort of superstar,” the owner of Southern Lanes in Alexandria says. Helping bowling to become a KHSAA sport and now coaching young bowlers from Campbell and Pendleton Counties as well as working with Special Olympics is Don’s claim to fame now.
“We’re a bowling family,” he said with a nod to his wife, Clare, “who is looking down on me, I hope,” and two daughters and a son who bowl. “This has been a great road for me to travel down the last 50 years,” Don said.
• Jim Wihebrink Jr. has spent 28 years coaching track and field at Ryle and Boone County High Schools and it’s been anything but work to finish top three in the region 22 times with 84 regional champions, 242 state participants and four individual winners in a career that has seen him named coach of the year on three occasions.
“I worked with a lot of really good people,” Jim said of his nearly three decades coaching. “They made the work not feel like work.”
• Accepting for the late Buddy Goodwin of Silver Grove was another Silver Grove native, longtime Newport coach Grady Brown. Growing up “in a small town like Silver Grove with a population of 1,200, from the time I was a little boy, I heard the name Buddy Goodwin,” Grady said. Not a surprise, Goodwin was good enough for UK’s Adolph Rupp to recruit him to UK’s freshman team after Silver Grove in 1956. “He could do anything—horseshoes, pool, and he was very smart,” Grady said of Goodwin who went on to Brewton-Parker Junior College in Georgia – one of 16 Silver Grovers to do so – then to Oglethorpe in Atlanta which he helped to the NAIA Final Four.
A businessman with companies in Kentucky and Florida in his career, Carter was shot and killed by his business partner at the age of 62. “I appreciate you all remembering him,” Grady said, cradling the award plaque that he plans to display at Pelle’s Bar & Grill in Silver Grove. “Even though they’re gone, they live on,” he said of one of Silver Grove’s best.
• Brad Fritz out of Covington Catholic, Dixie Heights and Thomas More, finished up to a standing ovation after he stood up out of his motorized wheelchair to thank the crowd for listening to his one-of-a-kind inspirational story. As a young athlete at CovCath, the baseball/basketball/golf guy who loved football and earned a varsity letter as a freshman, had a career path that went through “his first love – football.” But then a serious automobile accident that could have – maybe should have — killed him, took away his sporting dreams with a traumatic brain injury.
With brother Mickey setting up his laptop to deliver the speech he’d written through his computer from his wheelchair, Brad opened with “Forgive me for not getting up,” to laughs in a mood-lightening moment which he would reference when noting how doctors warned that he “might not have a sense of humor” as they cautioned much more seriously that he exhibited signs “of brain death on initial evaluation” after the 1999 accident when he was 15. It’s not the only time the doctors that Brad credits with “saving my life – and that’s the absolute truth” – were wrong about him.
And what a life it’s been for Brad. As longtime Northern Kentucky coach Dick Maile noted that “Brad has affected thousands of lives” with his motivational speaking – even though Brad says he technically can’t exactly “speak” — to schools and companies and hospitals in places as far away as Rhode Island. “He’s already in the Hall of Fame of God,” Maile told Brad. But Brad shook his head no, “I can’t go to heaven.” Why not, Maile asked him. Pointing to his wheelchair, Brad said “there’s a stairway to heaven.”
Brad’s life is a tribute to how three CovCath families have chosen to turn tragedy into triumph, Maile said. The Fritz’s and Burke’s – his parents Don and Peggy – and their cousins, the Williamses, who lost two sons – Kenny and Brian, one to an accidental fall when Brad was in the fifth grade, the other on 9/11 at the World Trade Center two years after Brad’s accident – and responded with the Kenny and Brian Williams Fund underwriting high school and college scholarships in their memory.
One January awardee, NBA great and Naismith Hall of Famer Arnie Risen of Williamstown, was announced but his induction will be held at a future date when his family can be here, said NKSHOF President Randy Marsh.
Doubling up on a 1,000 for CovCath’s Harney
It hadn’t ever happened for Covington Catholic in football before but there it was, in November, when juniors – quarterback Cash Harney and running back Dylan Gaiser – both reached 1,000 yards in rushing in the same backfield the same season. Harney finished the season with 1,476 yards and Gaiser 1,378.
But Harney liked that number so much he followed it up with another 1,000 – as in career points in basketball – this week. With his eight points in an 80-35 win over Holmes Tuesday, the dynamic point guard has a career total of 1,007 in his four years of varsity play starting with two seasons at Beechwood and a season and a half now at CovCath with a career average of 11.89 points a game including this season’s 14.9 ppg.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dweber3440.