By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Ted Arlinghaus said he was surprised when Holy Cross High School officials asked him to become the new head coach of the girls basketball team.
The Indians posted winning records of 17-13 and 22-10 the last two seasons with Marty Rankin as head coach and Arlinghaus as one of his assistants. And now Arlinghaus will be running the program.
“I think it caught a lot of us by surprise to be honest,” Arlinghaus said of his promotion to head coach. “I think they just made a change in direction and so they reached out to me, and here we are.”
Rankin said it was not his decision to leave the Holy Cross program after guiding the Indians to the 2019 9th Region All “A” Classic championship and back-to-back trips to the 9th Region postseason playoffs.
“I did not step down,” Rankin said in an email. “I was actually caught off guard and shocked by the decision to make a change, not to mention the timing of it all. I was told that it was not because of won-loss record, not because of performance on the court, not because of basketball knowledge and not because of anything I did in managing the program. In fact, I was not given any specific details as to the full basis of the decision, and there was no communication after either of my two seasons on any type of sub-par performance.”
Arlinghaus, 39, is a 1999 Holy Cross graduate who played on the boys basketball team. He remained involved with the school’s athletic program after graduation and joined the girls basketball coaching staff two years ago after Rankin became head coach.
Last season, the Indians posted a winning record and made it to the 9th Region post-season playoffs with only one senior — Jade Simpson — on the varsity roster. She averaged 10.2 points and 12.6 rebounds per game.
“We”ll have big shoes to fill when it comes to rebounding, but other than that we bring back everybody else,” Arlinghaus said. “We have a pretty cohesive group and the girls all get along with each other. It makes it easy when you’ve got a good group of kids to work with.”
The list of returning players for Holy Cross includes senior guard Grace Bezold, who averaged a team-high 17.9 points per game last season. The other returning senior starter is forward Kara Krumpelman, who averaged 4.1 points and 6.2 rebounds.
“Marty laid down a great foundation with the girls and we’re just going to continue to build and improve on those things,” Arlinghaus said. “But we’ll have a couple little things that we’ll try to do differently this year. As teams are starting to know us, we’ll have to adjust, and I think we’ll be ready for it.”
Rankin said he was grateful for the opportunity to coach the Holy Cross team and “wish nothing but the best to coach Arlinghaus and the girls in the program.”
KHSAA has not scheduled next meeting about fall sports
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association Board of Control planned to schedule a meeting during the last week of July to discuss starting dates for fall sports competition, but a definite day and time for that meeting has not yet been posted on the khsaa.org website.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most fall sports teams have been limited to preseason conditioning workouts and small-group drills in accordance with the Center of Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for youth sports that were adopted by the governor.
Earlier this month, golf teams got the go-ahead to start competition on July 31 because it’s a non-contact sport where social distancing is not a problem. The current starting dates for other sports are Aug. 10 for soccer, Aug. 17 for volleyball, cross country and field hockey and Aug. 21 for football.
The Board of Control will decide if those starting dates will remain. But the number of new COVID-19 cases reported in Kentucky has been on the rise, including more than three dozen cases tied to the Hazard High School football team. Eighteen of those 38 cases were students.
Injury sidetracks CovCath grad’s first season with Pirates
Covington Catholic graduate Luke Maile’s first season as a catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates came to an abrupt end last Thursday when he fractured the index finger on his right hand during a preseason intrasquad game in Pittsburgh.
After Maile underwent surgery on Friday, the team announced that he would likely be out 10-12 weeks. That means he probably won’t play during the abbreviated 60-game regular season caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maile has played in 216 major leagues over the last five seasons. He spent two with Tampa Bay and three with Toronto before getting picked up by Pittsburgh earlier this year. He’s considered a top-level defensive player behind the plate, but he has a .198 career batting average with 10 home runs, 60 RBI and 53 runs scored over the last five seasons.