How deeply sports affect us – and for some, the rest of our lives – could not have been more obvious listening to former Highlands’ basketball and track star Bill Hitch at his Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame induction this week.
Just one moment of his own sports history had Hitch tearing up, thinking of a time back in the mid-1960’s when Kentucky was still shaking off the legacy of segregated sports here and the KHSAA had only recently opened up to Black schools. At the time, pretty much the only Northern Kentucky cities where Black families resided were Covington, Newport and Elsmere.
And here was Covington Grant basketball coach Jim Brock, after his team had barely beaten a Highlands’ team “that had played a near-perfect game – we’d have had to stay with Grant,” Bill says — in the Ninth Region semifinals of the Covington team with two Division I players and second in the state only to Wes Unseld’s Louisville Seneca – visiting with the Highlands’ players afterwards. Brock told Hitch what a great game he’d played, congratulated the Birds and told them they probably should have won.
Thinking of what the former Tuskegee athlete Brock had to endure in those days of racial inequity and yet the grace and humanity he displayed at a moment like that, had Hitch struggling to talk for a bit, to his surprise. Just a small sign at how sports can grab us and never leave.
Hitch also talked of how “back in the day when kids went out to play . . . no, they did,” he said to laughter, describing how his love of basketball was developed by taking thousands of shots a day and playing with the likes of Bob and Mark Arnzen in the St. Thomas parking lot and then “all the Newport guys” like Eugene Britton during the summers in town.
Or what an honor it was to get your picture and a quick paragraph in Marty Kehoe’s Sports Keyhole column in the Kentucky Enquirer. For a guy who “loved to shoot it,” Bill said one of his great disappointments is that there was no three-point shot when he played.
Fellow Hall of Famer Skip Hicks, a former Highlands’ coach and still keeper of the official book for Highlands’s basketball, recalls how Hitch – his onetime Cumberland College roommate – would follow Scott Draud’s scoring exploits at Highlands. And how he told Hitch that it took Draud four years to break one of his records as a high-scoring Bluebird that he had set in a season-and-a-half. Which one, Hitch asked. “Shots attempted,” Hicks deadpanned.
As much as Hitch was the highlight with his personal takes, the balance of the March induction class didn’t disappoint.
Here they are:
• Carl Heck: a longtime Newport Central Catholic coach and former all-state football player for the Thoroughbreds, Heck said for those who know him, he would be “brief.” But then qualified that by saying he has his own definition of “brief,” which would not be a description of Heck’s 34 years as an assistant football coach and 27 as girls’ basketball coach at his alma mater on top of his four years as a member of the Marine Corps.
And from his first year, as the team bus driver, he wondered: “Did they keep me around because I was a good coach or because Catholic schools don’t let their bus drivers go?” Heck wasn’t taking any chances. Having been married 55 years to “My gal Sal,” as he calls his high school sweetheart, Sally, who was there with their son and grandson, a wrestler at nearby CovCath who got out of class for the induction.
• Paula Crail, looking every bit like she could still compete today in the sport where she won Kentucky state diving titles in 1983 and 1984 for Notre Dame Academy, the fifth Northern Kentuckian to win at state in a sport that has been very competitive locally, talked about “the commitment parents make for an elite athlete.”
For “family and coaches, the time and talent” they offer these athletes is the key. Crail, who started out as an age-group champion at all levels at Bluegrass Swim Club, finished her career as an All-American at the University of South Carolina.
• Bobby Young was one of the top three-sport athletes at Owen County High School but he made his biggest impact as a baseball player for Jim Connor at Thomas More.
One year at TMU, he led the nation in stolen base percentage and was fourth in batting average in the NAIA ranks.
That was good enough for the Pittsburgh Pirates to sign the NAIA All-American and member of both the TMU and Owen County Halls of Fame. “Not only my coaches but my teammates helped me get here today,” Bobby said, with a nod to Duane Haag, who nominated him.
Speaking of teammates, “Dave Justice was a part of that team,” Young says of the Atlanta Braves star and NL Rookie of the Year with a grin. “He was our second-best player.”
As a member of the Pirates, Young reported for spring training to Bradenton, Fla., where to his surprise, there was his father. “Don’t you have a job?” Bobby asked him. “Just keep playing and I’ll be here,” his dad told him. He wasn’t missing this.
• Kevin Wolfe says he’s just about over that state championship game loss for his Dixie Heights soccer team in 1987. Not quite, but almost. “I’m still replaying that loss to Louisville Ballard,” he says. “It was the first championship game for Dixie Heights . . . and the last.”
Having played all sports, Kevin was an early convert to soccer, played on one of Northern Kentucky’s first select teams on his way to MVP honors his final two years at Dixie and named Northern Kentucky’s outstanding player before heading off to NKU where he earned the NKU Career Achievement Award combining athletics, academics, character and leadership with two MVP awards and one Great Lakes Valley Conference championship to show for his time at NKU.
“No ESPN coverage or NIL money,” Kevin says of choosing soccer. Where other college athletes talk about a hoped-for pro career, “when they ask soccer players what they plan to do, they say ‘teach’.” But with the U.S. – “and our friends Canada and Mexico hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2026,” Kevin says, this may be the time for soccer to step up and step out.
His rationale on the benefits of getting involved with sports at a young age, Kevin says, is that “It’s not about how many you knock down but how many you lift up.”
• Bob Rankin (deceased) was a top track athlete at Dayton High School, where he graduated in 1935, and at UK, where he was undefeated in the 100- and 200-yard dash events in college. He also tied the great Jesse Owens in a 50-yard dash once and was a charter member of the lettermen’s K Club.
After college and service in World War II, the Ft. Thomas resident started working at the Enquirer, where he became the outdoors columnist for more than 40 years, while organizing shows, contests and fishing expeditions all over the world.
He would help with the founding of both the Ft. Thomas Swim Club and AJ Jolly Park while teaching journalism at Northern Kentucky Community College, the forerunner of NKU.
More NKSHOF doings at Behringer-Crawford Museum
Author Charlie Coleman will be at the Devou Park museum from 1-4 p.m. Saturday signing copies of his new book, Northern Kentucky Sports Legends of the 1950s, as part of the NKSHOF memorabilia display. Admission for NKSHOF members is free.
Hall of Fame Dates to note
The top fundraiser for the college scholarships the NKSHOF awards ever year, the annual golf outing, will be Saturday, July 9, at the Kenton County Golf Course. Cost is $80 per player. Also, the annual Summer Reunion when the group presents its top five awards will be Aug. 19, according to Pres. Randy Marsh.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.