Great group for the October induction into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame Wednesday at 1 at The Gardens in Park Hills.
There are coaches and players, male and female, from Boone, Campbell, Kenton and Pendleton counties. The five new Hall of Famers cover the breadth of Northern Kentucky sports. As they should.
The public is invited and there is no charge.
• PAM KORDENBROCK HART is best remembered as a pioneering high-scoring basketball star in the early days of KHSAA play with her 30-points-plus average for all four years at Dixie Heights. That’s right, all four years with her 32 points a game as a senior her best.
After her all-state junior and senior seasons, Pam, who also played volleyball, earned a full scholarship to Western Kentucky where she finished with a second-all-time career scoring average of 16.6 points a game and 1,375 career points, ninth best in WKU history, where she would end up in the WKU Sports Hall of Fame and become the first woman in the Kentucky All-Star Hall of Fame in 1980.
• WAYNE SHIPLEY will be remembered by all who have known the Beaver Creek, Ohio, native in his more than half-century of coaching at Newport, Beechwood, St. Henry and Conner highs as one of the really good guys who have come this way to coach. He started out developing winners from his days molding a state champion and national runner-up Junior Pro team while working with the legendary Red Bartlett in the Newport Recreation Department.
Then at Beechwood for a decade in basketball and baseball, he’d earn a Coach of the Year award as the school’s all-time leader in wins. And at St. Henry, where he assisted on the Crusaders’ regional championship basketball team and finally now, at Conner, in his second half-century of coaching and teaching.
• RODNEY HAMILTON: Softball has been this Pendleton County native’s passion and he hasn’t let the loss of a leg in a work accident stop him. He played for years on the WUBE All-Stars raising money for charities as well as playing for the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame team that plays in vintage uniforms without gloves as those original Red Stockings did.
In softball, Rodney has won all-state and all-world honors for four teams that were state champs, another that was a World’s champ and two that were World’s runners-up. For 15 years, he finished in the Top 50 among home run hitters.
Rodney was named the winner of the Tom Fricke Service Award by the NKSHOF this past year for his efforts and walked in the Opening Day Parade on his prosthetic leg and threw out a first pitch to Johnny Bench, for whom Rodney has become the No. 1 fan. Rodney is now retired from sports, he says, but not as a role model. “If I can do it, you can do it,” is his message for young people. “Any help I can be to kids, I’d be honored to do it.”
• JIM BROWN has been a high school assistant football coach at Newport, Holmes, Campbell County and Scott. But it’s obvious the Newport Central Catholic grad’s heart has always been in Newport. He got his start at Newport Junior High where the Wildcats won a couple of league titles before moving up to the varsity as well as picking up middle school basketball and varsity and JV coaching duties in softball and girls’ basketball as well as baseball, where worked with his cousins, Ray and Grady Brown.
He also served eight years as Newport’s athletic supervisor and says one of the most rewarding things he did was introduce the fishing program to Newport which “helped many kids discover this activity who would not normally be exposed to this sport,” he says.
• DENNIS KELLY did it all in football at Boone County for Coach Jack Turner as a three-year, two-way starter for the Rebels. He started out as a wide receiver/safety, leading Northern Kentucky with 42 catches for 801 yards and nine TDs as a junior team MVP. But midway in his senior season, he had to step in at quarterback after an injury to the starter there and led Boone to a 9-1 record, earning another MVP award, as well as selection to the East-West All-Star Game and a scholarship to North Carolina.
RAIDER MICHAEL MAYER NO LONGER PLAYING LIKE A ROOKIE
Covington Catholic alum Michael Mayer is no longer looking, or playing like, a rookie for the Las Vegas Raiders after leading them to a 21-17 win over the New England Patriots Sunday with his second straight career day. After catching three passes in the Raiders’ first six plays, the Notre Dame alum finished with five catches for 75 yards, both career highs for the team’s No. 1 pick. The chance to play last week against the Packers, Mayer says, has skyrocketed his confidence.
“I can run guys over to get a first down and I can get around them,” Mayer said of his yards-after-catch ability before this game. “The more you break tackles and the more yards after catches you get, the more balls you’re going to get . . . I hurdled and stiff-armed some guys in college, I just haven’t had the chance here yet.” Until Sunday.
So much so that The Athletic went with this headline in its game story: Michael Mayer among 4 reasons for confidence in Raiders’ offense after ugly win.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.