One inductee is 94 and going strong. Another would have been just months away from his 100th birthday. Two of them shared a Hebron hometown and a pair of sports with state titles. Another apologized to his teammates if he maybe wanted to win too much. And finally, one spelled out who the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame was really honoring this month. And it wasn’t him.
Forget the cold weather and the snow, The Arbors in Park Hills was bright and sunny as the six newest members joined the NKSHOF. Here’s a look at each of them.
• Troy Cole, Conner football and wrestling, won state championships in football and two individual and one team title in wrestling. “We did pretty well,” Troy says of that 1983 Bob Lewis-coached Cougar team that shut down Highlands’ overpowering offense with him as the leading tackler on its way to the school’s lone state football title.
“But I’m not here because of me,” Troy said, “but the support around me.” First of those would be his Conner wrestling coach, Wayne Badida, who’s been doing this for 55 years and still going strong, even though he’s officially retired. “An amazing man,” Troy says.
With a bit of an ego then, Troy confesses, “My goal was to win and I know that’s not everybody’s goal.” But his memories now are of his coaches and teammates. One of them was a teammate – and state champ in both sports. Which gets us to . . .
• Matt Shotwell, Conner football and wrestling: Or to be exact, Dr. Matt Shotwell, a cardiologist now in Cynthiana who looks like he could still pin people at his high school weight. His success, Matt says, “is a testament to the people I grew up with on a country road in Boone County – like the Cole brothers.” They taught him that “achievement isn’t a given, you earn it.” Then there was Coach Badida. “He saw something in me I didn’t see in myself.” And then his parents taught him that “success isn’t something you talk about, it’s what you do.”
What Matt did was overcome a “15 score on the ACT” to work his way up through college at NKU and UK Medical School to become a physician and then a cardiologist. “I think I was destined to succeed not by my own talents but the people around me.” His secret? Wrestling. “It taught me how to compete,” he says. And now here he is, “the general, calling the shots for others. It’s a testament to the power of influence.”
• James Hayes, Holmes football, basketball, track & field, says it was all about family for him. “Mom, you are the real Hall of Famer. You made this all possible – the late nights, the early mornings.” But not to leave out his brothers, who “taught me the tough lessons,” James said. “You never let me take the easy road.
The same for a litany of coaches and mentors “who were there when I needed it,” says James, who gained more than 2,000 yards and scored more than 30 touchdowns for the Bulldogs in three seasons that made him a finalist for Kentucky’s Mr. Football in 1992 and earned him a scholarship to EKU. He also played on Holmes’ 1990 state runner-up basketball team and set school records for the 100-meter dash and the 4X400 relay in his three seasons on the track.
But it’s not about what he’s done in sports but what he’s gotten from them, James says: “This game has given me so much – lifelong friends – but especially a platform to influence others. This is for you,” James said, holding his award plaque up.
• Gary Simon Jr., Highlands’ baseball, basketball, soccer, golf, describes himself as “having a bit of sports ADD,” he said, “whatever was in season” he played. And now he’s following his dad’s footsteps into the NKSHOF, just months after getting named to the Highlands’ HOF. “My dad wanted me to be around people like that.” His favorite sport? “Basketball,” he admitted although he earned honors in all of them from scoring his first varsity soccer goal in the seventh grade to medaling in district golf.
But after taking a break from official sports for a few years, he found himself – now “two inches taller and 40 pounds of muscle” bigger than the 6-foot-2, 180-pounder he was at Highlands. And playing flag football in Ft. Thomas with some ex-Bengals who couldn’t believe the 22-year-old wasn’t playing college football.
They got the word out on him and despite interest from bigger schools, Gary picked West Virginia State in Charleston where he could play right away. Turns out that “right-away” opening game for him was against a Marshall team that was No. 1 in the nation in Div. 1-A with Randy Moss and Chad Pennington and a crowd of 40,000. “The experience was awesome,” Gary said, even if the score was 42-7. A successful career as quarterback and punter for WVSU followed.
He finished up with an apology – and a hope. “To my teammates, I’m sorry I was so competitive. I was always confident I would win.” But it’s different now. “My 12-year-old son is my game now. Someday I hope I make the Daddy Hall of Fame. . . like my father.”
• Irene McCracken, Lloyd Memorial and Dixie Heights, may have “been born 50 years too early” to be a high school coach but it hasn’t kept the lively 94-year-old, who retired 41 years ago as a high school teacher and staffer, from a lifetime of hanging with the right people and doing some seriously cool things. At UK, where she became a big-time Wildcat fan, she was named one of the top 10 phys. ed students her senior year in 1952. Also in that group: UK icons Cliff Hagan, Frank Ramsey and Babe Parilli. Asked if she knew the legendary Dixie Heights football coach Bill Shannon, well, she played bridge with him and his wife for years. And she was offered a job by Adolph Rupp after graduation for not much money but a free apartment. And then it turned out that “apartment” was in the barn where Rupp kept his prize bulls.
No surprise that Irene ended up at Lloyd as a teacher/secretary and then at Dixie Heights. One of her duties was to cut the checks for the officials “and I loved that job,” Irene says of getting to know all the sports people. At Dixie Heights, they even paid her $10 more a week to do it. She kept busy, if not as a sports coach, but for 32 years as the coach of the cheerleaders and majorettes at Lloyd and Dixie.
But her 1984 retirement didn’t keep her away from sports there. She’s still selling tickets at games, although now in a location where she can see both halves. “It’s been a wonderful ride,” Irene says, “and the good Lord willing, this August I’ll be back for my 67th year on the gate at Dixie.”
• Arnie Risen, Williamstown basketball, has been gone since 2012 but if he were here today, he’d be just under 100 years old and far away from the tiny tobacco farm outside town and a house without running water where he was born in 1926. But at a lean 6-9, Arnie could play, playing in the first basketball game he’d ever seen and setting the scoring record for the Eighth Region that lasted more than 75 years despite accomplishing it before the jump shot or the three-point shot. When EKU canceled basketball after his freshman season in those WWII years, Arnie found himself at Ohio State where he led the Buckeyes to two straight Final Fours and earned second-team All-American honors.
But an illness prevented Arnie from playing his senior year until the Indianapolis pro team that John Wooden played for when he coached at Dayton a decade earlier approached him. They offered $75 a game but he got them up to $300 before he agreed. My favorite story of his days in Indy is the night at Butler Fieldhouse when an opponent launched a 30-foot two-handed set shot and Arnie jumped up and caught it. There was no goal-tending rule then, but no one had ever done it, apparently – and the place went dead silent. What had they just seen? What does that mean for basketball? What it meant was that there was an immediate new rule preventing goal-tending.
In his 10-year NBA career after three seasons in the BAA with Indy, Arnie would play for the Rochester Royals and Boston Celtics, win an NBA championship at both places, make the NBA All-Star Team four times, mentor a young Bill Russell, score 7,633 points with 5,011 rebounds and 1,058 assists. In leading the Royals to their first NBA title in 1951 in Game 7 of the series over the New York Knicks, Arnie scored 24 points with 13 rebounds.
Arnie would join Dave Cowens as Northern Kentucky’s second Naismith Memorial Hall of Famer in 1998. His award was accepted by Charlie Coleman, the former Bellevue High coach and administrator and Northern Kentucky sports historian, whose just-published book – Northern Kentucky Sports Legends of the 1950s, is available now. More on that later.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dweber3440.