By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
For one of the few times all night, Highlands’ coach Bob Sphire was not happy. Friday night’s showdown against the state’s No. 3 overall team—Class 4 powerhouse Boyle County, winner of five state championships in the last decade — was barely over five minutes. And the giant scoreboard at David Cecil Stadium had been turned off.
Nowhere was there visual evidence of the Bluebirds’ shocking 41-21 romp, making it clear the Birds were back and reminding the folks in Ft. Thomas that this is the way it used to be.
“Oh well,” Sphire told his team as he looked up at the scoreless board, “we’re going to enjoy it anyway.”
There was a whole lot to enjoy from the get-go as Highlands built on a pair of first-half touchdowns each by senior play-everywhere Mr. Football candidate Tayden Lorenzen and another pair by dynamic and rapidly maturing sophomore quarterback Bryce Armstrong, who hit Lorenzen for a 27-yard TD strike to get things going just 3:01 into the game. And one who looks every bit the part of a player who will be a Mr. Football candidate in two years.
But the Highlands’ offensive outburst didn’t end there. Junior Colt Kremer, son of former UK linebacker Jeff Kremer who finished as the sixth-leading all-time SEC tackler in 1987, took over in the second half with a pair of power rushing TDs of his own.
“We just had to keep pounding the ball,” Colt said. And so they did after a first half with the 6-foot-1, 195-pound strong-armed Armstrong taking advantage of a tun-heavy gameplan. He knew, Armstrong said, that the Boyle County “defensive ends would crash down and I’d pull it and get 10 yards.” Or 33 as he did on his first elusive TD run.
Or maybe on the second score where he had two choices, Armstrong said, as he faced a defender at the goal line: “I could run through him or around him,” and then he realized he couldn’t run around him, ”so I ran through him.”
And sent the Highlands’ fans into a whole lot of delirium. No one does that to the physical, fundamentally sound Rebels. But the Birds did. And did so the first half on defense, holding Boyle County to 32 yards of total offense and two first downs.
Give Boyle credit, playing without the state’s best prospect and the nation’s No. 1 tight end, 6-7, 240-pound speedy soon-to-be-a-millionaire Seneca Driver, after committing to Oklahoma, Boyle County came out and challenged Highlands. And drew Sphire’s praise for a team that he’d had “plenty of head-knockers” with when he was coaching Lexington Catholic. “I love what (Boyle coach) Justin (Haddix) did,” he said of the way Boyle challenged Highlands, down four touchdowns.
The Rebels went on a 16-play scoring drive to open their scoring, keeping the Highlands’ offense off the field for eight minutes after intermission. And then there was that final score when it took Boyle eight plays to score starting out at the 2 thanks to multiple penalties.
But nothing was going to keep Sphire from enjoying this one. “You don’t ever expect to score 41 points on them,” he said. And yeah, he was really pleased with Armstrong’s progress in the season’s first month to make this his team. “A big sign of ‘I got this, “ Sphire said of Armstrong’s 129 yards rushing with those two TDs and 102 more passing with another TD. By himself, Armstrong equaled the entire Boyle offense.
But the coach couldn’t have been as excited as Armstrong, who was holding court for a half-dozen Highlands student fans before he could reflect on his progress from an opening four-turnover loss to Lexington Frederick Douglass to no turnovers the last two games.
Then there was the slimmed-down, quick-footed Lorenzen, just now getting back to 100 percent, Sphire said, after rehabbing a foot injury from last spring, running the ball 11 times for 73 yards with a TD on the ground and in the air. And “feeling a lot better than I did last year,” he said when he was above 230 pounds and now he’s below that weight. Kremer added 58 yards to his two TDs as Highlands outgained Boyle County, 362 yards to 231.
And lived up to the banner the cheerleaders had for the Birds run through before the game: “Oh say can you see a Bluebird victory?”
Yes they could. But Sphire was not about to say that this was a turnaround in a series that hadn’t seen Highlands with a win against the Danville school in 14 seasons as Boyle won five state titles in that time with the Birds’ last championship in 2014. But still, Highlands has 23 state titles, second-most in the state behind Louisville Trinity, and nearly double Boyle’s 12.
And yes, the Bluebirds were able to add another victory to the school’s 953 all-time making them the No. 5 winningest team in the nation. But as Sphire made clear, “It’s a big win but it’s not CovCath,” of the battle for Clas 4A supremacy in Northern Kentucky that will happen Oct. 2 at CovCath.
SCORING SUMMARY
HIGHLANDS (3-1) 14 14 6 7–41
BOYLE COUNTY (3-1) 0 0 7 14—21
Highlands: Lorenzen 27 pass from Armstrong (Anderson PAT kick good)
Highlands: Armstrong 33 run (Anderson PAT kick good)
Highlands: Lorenzen 12 run (Anderson PAT kick good)
Highlands: Armstrong 5 run (Anderson PAT kick good)
Boyle County: Logan 13 run (Klosterman PAT kick good)
Highlands: Kremer 5 run (PAT kick fails)
Boyle County: Logan 36 pass from Raleigh (Klosterman kick good)
Highlands: Kremer 9 run (Anderson PAT kick good)
Boyle County: Logan 3 run (Klosterman PAT kick good)