One won 13 KHSAA championships in swimming as a high schooler, another averaged 27 points and 12 rebounds a game as a senior. Two more combined football and track – one all the way to the NFL level – and a fifth started playing high school tennis at the age of 13 and stayed with sports as a coach and official.
They’re the five-person May inductee class for the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame, the final one for this school year. Among them, this diverse class represents five different sports and five different schools in Kenton and Campbell counties.
ROBERT “CORKY” HURST had the good fortune to play for a pair of Hall of Fame coaches – Fred Moeves and Reynolds Flynn at Covington Holmes and in his senior season in 1971 that saw him named Co-Ninth Region Player of the Year, he scored 27 points a game while grabbing 12 rebounds — “numbers few have come up with” said Kenney Shields, Northern Kentucky’s winningest basketball coach from his time at St. Thomas, Highlands and NKU.
“First and foremost, I’d like to thank my wife,” Hurst said, of the couple who “have been together since sophomore year in high school.” And his Hall of Fame coaches. And his teammates, with three of his Holmes Bulldog team moving on together for college.
“It is an absolute honor,” Hurst said of his induction.
DEBBIE REED KEEFE started swimming at the age of 10 and has stayed with it “for the last 55 years,” the Highlands alum says, as an athlete, a coach, a mom and an official. The daughter of basketball official Mo Reed, Debbie says the best thing about sports are the relationships you create including with her husband, Tom, “who has shared this aquatic journey together with me.”
And thanks also to “the hundreds of swimmers with whom I’ve trained and competed.” Retired now as a teacher after 53 years, Debbie stayed with her lifelong sport as a swimming official and University of Cincinnati coach in a career that saw her win 10 individual state titles – in the 50- and 100-freestyle for five straight undefeated years – and three relay titles from the eighth grade through her senior year while leading the Bluebirds to five straight state team titles.
Debbie continues today as a swimming official. “I can’t get water out of my veins,” she says.
DON WEAVER thanked his Ludlow High coaches – Tom Staley, Jay Brewer and Woodie McMillen for what they provided him in an all-state football career that has him with six receiving records and one in track in the 4X800 relay, records that stand today.
But it was also his youth football coach, Robert Bell, who was the kind of “positive influence” in his life – and his wife, Shelly, and his son who “allowed him to continue his sports passion as a coach and official” – that helped him realize that “if you love the game, it will give back to you.”
That’s also the lesson he attributes to “my dad’s example as a volunteer fire chief” that he followed as a coach of the Northern Kentucky Patriots and as an 18-year KHSAA baseball umpire who does free winter baseball clinics in the community.
TREVOR READ started competing as a high school athlete at Lloyd Memorial at the age of 13 that saw him named team MVP three years before going on to Interclub play as a competitor and team director where he won the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Interclub Championship twice as a player and twice more finished as runner-up.
Thanking his family for “allowing to do his love” of sports, Don says that “greatness is not about talent but resilience” and how his “best moments were sharing the court with my fellow competitors . . . no one gets to do this alone.”
Coaching and officiating youth basketball the last six years, Trevor also served as a secretary raising money for the Blessed Sacrament Boosters.
HERSHEL TURNER was a native of the community of Houston in Breathitt County but grew up in Campbell County where he became a two-way tackle UK coaches saw in an all-star game and offered him a scholarship. And where, amazingly, he became the regional champion in the mile – a combination we may never see again — a big man who could run distance.
Then it was off to the University of Kentucky for Turner, who died in January at the age of 82. At UK, he was named All-SEC twice and All-American in 1963 after playing the most minutes as a two-way member of UK’s “Thin Thirty” team that upset Tennessee under ex-Marine Charlie Bradshaw before becoming a second-round NFL selection of the St. Louis Football Cardinals, where he was named their Rookie of the Year in his first season in 1964. But after a second season and a serious knee injury, Turner’s NFL career was over.
With today’s advances in orthopedic surgery, the injury would not have been career-ending but in response to it, Hershel went on to a successful business career as the owner of a large packaging supplies company while living in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield with his wife of 58 years, Bonnie.
High school baseball doubleheader coming up
The highlight of having both the Eighth and Ninth Region baseball tournaments at Thomas More Stadium next week could be the back-to-back championship games Thursday with the Eighth Region championship game at 5 p.m. at the Florence Y’alls’ stadium followed by the Ninth Region game at 8 p.m. Baseball fans here, make your plans as the two regional draws happen the next two days with the Eighth Region tourney opening Sunday and the Ninth Region following Monday.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.