By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
With eight new head coaches among the ranks, Northern Kentucky high school football may never have entered a season with more questions to answer.
Except at Beechwood.
The powerhouse program at the Ft. Mitchell school that’s won 18 state championships in the last 42 seasons, just keeps rolling along. Sure, the Tigers also have a new head coach. It’s just that he’s the old coach whose teams won eight state championships in nine appearances in Noel Rash’s 17 years running the program.
After a three-year break, Noel is back and watching him fly around the field coaching up his Tigers, he’s looking better than ever.
He’s down 38 pounds to a fit and fighting 190, lighter than in his playing days as a strong safety and outside linebacker on the first three football teams at Thomas More in the early 1990s.
That’s when his dream of becoming a high school football coach convinced him it was time to turn his back on his Delta baggage-handling career at the airport, move back home and head off to college.
Now he’s getting a second shot at that vocation after three years of semi-retirement while helping out at Holmes and then filling in for a season as Conner’s head coach.
But there’s this difference with Rash’s return to his Ft. Mitchell “family.” In most scenarios, when a new coach arrives, he’s challenged to get things going for a program maybe in some disarray with a new staff and a new way of doing things.
Not so at Beechwood. Most of the staff, including offensive coordinator Greg Hergott, is still here. And the players, well, in all of Northern Kentucky, it’s a good year if all 21 programs here produce two Power Four conference football players in a season. Beechwood, all by itself, has two this season.
Quarterback Emmett Queen, in his second year after transferring from Covington Catholic, is a pro-style 6-foot-4, 216-pound drop-back quarterback with a big arm heading to Wake Forest.
And speedy play-anywhere Tyler Fryman, who has been a varsity starter in baseball since the eighth grade, will be taking his multiple skill set to the University of Kentucky where he’ll play two sports – football and baseball.
Oh, and both are among the top 10 candidates for Kentucky’s Mr. Football.
At a school where they’re accustomed to football success, where in the decade of the 1990s, they won a Kentucky-best 126 football games with an .893 winning percentage and recorded a 38-game win streak in addition to seven state titles under Mike Yeagle, it’s not easy to make people stop and say, “Hey, this team could be really good.”
But that seems to be the case for 2026. Eight starters return on each side of the ball from a team that lost a 41-40 heartbreaker on the road in the playoffs to Owensboro Catholic, a team the Tigers had beaten, 50-34, the year before for the state championship.
When the school decided not to retain coach Jay Volker, Rash’s three-year successor, after he took a job near his Ohio home, Rash had no idea he’d get the call. “I’m not on social media,” he says with a laugh. He thought “they were calling me about the golf outing,” when Beechwood rang him up last spring. “Zero idea,” he says.
And now here he is, in midseason form. “It’s very emotional for me, this place is as special as it’s ever been,” he says, pointing to his players working out in the college-level weight room and the coaching table in his office with a dozen of many of the same assistants who helped him win 194 games (against 47 losses) in those 17 seasons.
“They brought me back to be their whipping boy,” he kids his coaches in what is an equal-parts serious and fun-filled give-and-take on the scrimmage with Class 6A school Ryle that has the Beechwood coaches pleased at how physically dominant this veteran Tiger team proved to be against a preseason Top 10 Kentucky program.
Having all those returning starters helps with seven – all seniors — going both ways. Start with the 6-1, 187-pound Fryman at wide receiver, running back and defensive back. Add in 6-2, 182-pound Caleb Arrasmith, also a baseball guy, at wide receiver/DB.
Then mix in speedster Nathan Pabst (5-8, 178) the primary ballcarrier with a real burst as well as surprising power. Add tight end/slot receiver/DE Bo Sowder (6-2, 226) with linemen Colin Morris (5-10, 220) and Kyle Shaw (6-1, 232) and finish it off with basketball guy Kingston Brocket (6-3, 228), who runs a 4.8 40-yard dash and will be a defensive end in college.
“It’s a different perspective,” says Brocket, who plans to go into broadcasting, “Coach Rash wants us to develop into who we’ll be after football.”
“The great coaching staff” is what attracted Queen, along with the chance to play right away. Going into his second season after throwing for 2,710 yards and 39 TD with just two interceptions, Queen says “you can’t do that without an offensive line.” And one more thing, Queen says: People “don’t realize how fast our guys are.”
“Having a Power-4 quarterback like Emmett makes it easier for us,” says Sowder. “I think we’re coming together,” and that includes the defense that stood strong in the Ryle scrimmage. “I’m really proud of that.”
But Sowder’s not surprised. “That’s all we know.”
BEECHWOOD TIGERS
2025 SEASON: 11-2, lost to Owensboro Catholic, 41-40, in region finals of Class 2A state playoffs.
STARTERS RETURNING: 8 offense, 8 defense.
DISTRICT: Class 2A, District 5 with Bracken County, Gallatin County, Owen County, St. Henry, Walton-Verona.
HEAD COACH: Noel Rash (193-46 in 17 seasons at Beechwood, 197-53 in 18 years overall)
2026 SCHEDULE
Aug. 28 – INDIAN HILL (Ohio), 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 4 – DIXIE HEIGHTS, 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 11 – at Simon Kenton, 7 p.m.
Sept. 18 – at Covington Catholic, 7 p.m.
Sept. 25 – at Owen County,, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 2 – WALTON-VERONA, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 9 – at St. Henry, 7 p.m.
Oct. 16 – GALLATIN COUNTY, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 23 – at Bracken County, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 30 – at Campbell County, 7 p.m.