They billed it as a Celebration of Life for one of the most special alums in Newport Central Catholic history.
And as the crowd who made it up and down “The Hill” Saturday as the snowstorm began would attest to, they were not exaggerating. It was a celebration indeed, one that one speaker after another said that Ed Ziegler, who died Oct. 30 at the age of 77, would very much have approved.
They came from as far away as Spokane, Wash., with a number from Ed’s adopted Colorado home where he was a distinguished law professor — and outdoorsman and poet and author and grandfather. Notre Dame and NewCath teammates were here. Along with Notre Dame athletes who weren’t teammates.
As were his legal colleagues and kids he’d grown up with. And family and friends. One of those ND guys didn’t know Ed as a player since they missed by a few years but Pat Sarb picked up on Ed — or maybe it was the other way around — when a retired Ed took over the leadership of the Notre Dame players’ research study into the negative effects — physical and intellectual — of brain trauma on football players.
It might also be noted that Pat was the person in real life who gave up his jersey that final game for walk-on Rudy Ruettiger — yes, that “Rudy” of movie fame — in a scene that was fictionalized for Hollywood. But here he was, because Ed had asked him to help with the study.
And not to make light of this but one of his NewCath buddies then told the story of how he’d always kid Ed about how he maybe suffered his first head trauma when the NewCath principal caught freshman Ed sailing paper airplanes out an open classroom window and banged his helmetless head off his desk.
On the serious side, one of his lawyer colleagues brought the five-volume treatise — the size of two phone books — on property rights, land planning and zoning that Ed authored and is now pretty much the final word on the subject, having been cited in appellate courts in all 50 states and the Supreme Court.
How serious a legal scholar — and outdoorsman — was the man they called “Zig Zag” Ed? When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would be in Colorado for fly fishing, he’d stay at Ed’s home for their fishing trips.
Another Notre Dame athlete, basketball star Joe Fredrick, the principal character in the highest-rated ESPN “30 for 30” series of all time — “Catholics vs. Convicts” about the famous t-shirt football game against Miami — was here. His dad, the late Charlie Fredrick, also a former NewCath and Notre Dame player and Ed’s NewCath coach his first three years, was one of the big influences — along with the late Tom Faust — on the high school football All-American’s choosing Notre Dame despite recruiting phone calls from “the governor of Kentucky,” as Ed’s sister, Sylvia Burke from Union recalled.
Ed’s family was here with sister Jeannine Ravenscraft in from Colorado along with Ed’s son, Adam, the day’s master of ceremonies along with his wife, Nichelle, and the two toddler granddaughters Ed doted on, Peyton and Skylar, whose comments were the highlight of the day.
And so soft and quiet that the lone words that could be heard were all that mattered for this day: “I love Grandpa Ed,” they each said.
Which was all anybody was saying.
Kentucky Barrels going coast-to-coast in Year 1
If you didn’t know the Truist Arena-based Kentucky Barrels were part of a nationwide operation in their inaugural Arena Football One 2026 season, the release of the Barrels’ schedule for this spring makes it clear they are.
The indoor league covers all the geographical bases as does the first 12-game home-and-home schedule.
The Barrels open at home against a Midwest opponent, the Michigan Arsenal out of Saginaw, April 12. And they close the home game schedule, before the playoffs, June 27 against the defending champion Albany Firebirds out of New York. Then it’s a West Coast opponent, the Oceanside (Calif.) Bombers here April 19.
The Nashville Kats will visit Highland Heights May 3 with the Beaumont (Tex.) Renegades here May 17. The Oregon Lightning based in the center of the state near Bend, Ore., visit June 13. And then Albany concludes the home schedule here two weeks later. Each of these home games will be reciprocated on the road.
The home schedule:
April 12 – Michigan Arsenal
April 19 – Oceanside Bombers
May 3 – Nashville Kats
May 17 – Beaumont Renegades
June 13 – Oregon Lightning
June 27 – Albany Firebirds
Season tickets are on sale now at the Truist Arena Box Office or online here. Packages and single game tickets on-sale dates will be announced soon.
CovCath all alone in the Top 25 basketball rankings
There’s good — and bad — news for Northern Kentucky in the second week of the Kentucky Sports Report’s Top 25 high school boys’ basketball rankings. For the second week in a row, the unbeaten CovCath Colonels are the clear choice at No. 2 behind No. 1 Louisville St. Xavier as the two big city Catholic schools have separated themselves from the rest of the state.
The bad news? No other Northern Kentucky team makes the Top 25. The best this week are No. 32 Highlands and No. 34 Holy Cross. And that’s it. And from the early results, that looks like it may be right although both Highlands and Holy Cross look like they may well deserve a Top 25 spot soon.
Here are the Top 25 rankings: 1) Louisville St. Xavier 2) CovCath 3) Madison Central 4) Frederick Douglass 5) Louisville Male 6) Daviess County 7) Bryan Station 8) Warren Central 9) Louisville Butler 10) Lexington Catholic 11) North Oldham 12) North Laurel 13) George Rogers Clark 14) McCracken County 15) Louisville Ballard 16) Grayson County 17) Ashland Blazer 18) Lyon County 19) Marshall County 20) Bell County 21) Louisville Seneca 22) Danville Christian Academy 23) Boyd County 24) Louisville Easten 25) Woodford County. Others receiving votes (in order) Caverna, Christian Academy-Louisville, Jeffersontown, Pleasure Ridge Park, Taylor County, Louisville DuPont Manual, Highlands, Russell, Covington Holy Cross, Clay County, Martin County, Great Crossing and Montgomery County.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.