By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
It’s the time of the sports year when football writers rank every sort of factor that comes into play in the sport that gets the school year – and to a great extent, our sports year – going.
One of those, especially in college football, is a ranking of places to play: the toughest, loudest, most scenic, most historic, that sort of thing. Football lends itself to that.
Even at the high school level. Even here in Northern Kentucky. Maybe especially for those of us lifelong high school football fans here.
So we thought we’d take a tour through our venues, some of them historic. Others almost brand new in a much-upgraded football facilities tour through Northern Kentucky.
But rather than ranking them, we thought we might just rate them as a fan. In different ways for all these different sorts of venues. In ways that matter to the average fan.
• Let’s start with where I started, at Ludlow’s Rigney Stadium, one of several WPA Depression Era facilities hereabouts. I could walk to Rigney down an alley and barely a block away as a kid. It’s where my lifelong love of sports got its start. But it’s not the same old Rigney. There’s a bright new artificial red turf field – one of the few that color in America — and a Hall of Fame highlighting Ludlow sports history but the same great view of the Ohio River.
• Working our way out the Dixie Highway, we’ll head out the Bromley-Crescent Springs Road to Ft. Mitchell and the back way to Beechwood High School’s Edgar McNabb Stadium. No program or facility has been more upgraded over the last half-century than this hillside stadium where you can also watch the game from the football building opposite the stands in a college-like setting. A great program has to have a great place to play. Beechwood does. And you can park in the Kroger’s parking lot right off I-75-71 at the Dixie Highway exit to boot.
• Heading down the Dixie to Park Hills, we end up at Covington Catholic’s Wooten Field/Dennis Griffin Stadium where an entirely new and relocated school building was matched with a new 2,800-seat campus stadium, track, fieldhouse and grotto nestled beneath neighboring homes where fans can catch the action from their backyards. Having been here as a coach when we started football with only the mostly grassless baseball outfield as our venue for freshmen, JV and varsity teams, the artificial turf facility is more than we could have ever hoped for.
• Moving down into Covington, we’ll head down Kyles Lane and over Henry Clay and tip our cap as we drive by the onetime home of the man for whom the stadium at Holmes High is named – the late and one-of-a-kind coach Tom Ellis – is named for. It’s still down in the same deep, steep ravine below “The Castle” but we’re not sure Tom would recognize this place. They’ve done a terrific job upgrading everything at this 3,500-capacity facility.
• Heading across the Fourth Street Bridge to the three older, river city urban venues, we first get to Newport High and the rebuilt Newport Stadium set to debut this fall after the Wildcats have spent a couple of seasons as “road warriors.” Not that the field has changed. It’s been there forever although with artificial turf now. And the sports complex with its tennis courts, track and baseball field will be complete again.
• Just a couple of blocks east, we’re in Bellevue at venerable Gilligan Stadium, built into the steep hillside in 1936 as a WPA project where we think we can still hear the thuds of the bruising Sutkamp brothers – Mike and Jon — running over opponents for the 1980’s state champion Tigers just yards away from the tennis courts Roger Klein’s state championship teams made famous. It’s a trip through history here. And a chance to see football played on grass. One of just two such facilities in Northern Kentucky and one you should catch when Bellevue hosts neighbor Dayton Oct. 11 this year in the 151st game in this historic “Battle for the Paddle.” (See Terry Boehmker’s NKyTribune story on coming improvements to Gilligan Stadium)
• Again, just a couple of miles away, we’re at Dayton’s even more historic Davis Stadium, built in 1934 and the second oldest in Kentucky and the only other surviving grass field where the Greendevils were one of the original powers in Northern Kentucky. Get here while you can this year as the Dayton folks are planning a new facility near the high school down by the river and visit the place where they tried to hire the greatest basketball coach of all-time – John Wooden – as a football coach first.
• Next we head out I-275 to US 27 and through Alexandria and past the junior high before reaching the relatively new high school complex for the Campbell County Camels where the 3,750-capacity Campbell County Stadium is right off Camel Crossing. It’s an expansive place, with a football fieldhouse and a place where the Camels have yet to make their history in the challenging Class 6A. But a beautiful setting.
• Back into town and you’ll hit the impressive sports complex that the Bishop Brossart Mustangs have built – field, stadium, track and an indoor football and all-sports complex many colleges would be proud of. Not sure that it’s not as overachieving an effort as any Class A program has managed to build. But it’s a heck of an accomplishment for the Alexandria parochial school.
• Stay on Alexandria Pike, head north to Ft. Thomas and hang a right and you come to Highlands’ David Cecil Memorial Stadium where 23 state championship teams have played for some of the greatest coaches in Kentucky history from Homer Rice to Owen Hauck to Bill Herrmann to Dale Mueller with too many great players to name. With the school buildings right up to the one sideline and all 4,700 seats on the other side in one massive grandstand, the place has always had a feel of greatness here. It was a place that a grade school kid from Ludlow would find a way to get here to see the Bluebirds play on the aptly named Memorial Parkway.
• Now it’s back into Kenton County – thank you I-275 – and a first stop at Scott High where the Eagles fly above a 2,500-capacity football stadium behind the school. Like their Campbell County counterpart, the Eagles have yet to make their mark on the field but the inflatable silver and blue inflated helmet they enter the field through is impressive.
• Simon Kenton comes next in our tour of southern Kenton County stopping at Independence where the 3,000-capacity Chlorine Menefee Stadium awaits. They’ve done a nice job for their Pioneers here and like all the big suburban and exurban public schools, there’s lots of parking and easy access. If you haven’t been out this way in a while, make the trip. It’s not exactly country anymore.
• Heading back into the heart of Kenton County, we’re on the Dixie Highway and in Edgewood for Dixie Heights, where the Little Colonels were one of the original big school powers under the late Bill Shannon when the likes of ex-coach Dave Browning were running wild here. The battles between Dixie and Highlands were legendary and this updated version of Rice Mountjoy Stadium is nicely done and a great place to watch football.
• Turn right on the Dixie and it’s just a couple of miles to Erlanger where the Lloyd Memorial Juggernauts get to play on a new-look, revitalized Cecil Dees Memorial Stadium with its second-year artificial turf field, football building and 4,000-seat stands and a proud place for Kyle Neiderman’s Juggs to play.
• As you head south on the Dixie, it’s just another couple of miles to the Florence venue that by its very name alone – Irv Goode Field/Owen Hauck Stadium – is a special place as the home of the first consolidated Boone County High School. Just the thought of Hall of Famer Shaun Alexander running on this field makes in that Columbia Blue jersey makes it a special place to catch a game.
• Again, it’s an easy a trip out US 42 right past Thomas More Stadium to Union, where the first stop at Ryle High School, the third largest in Kentucky with its 2,066 students, awaits. An easy trip if . . . if you aren’t caught in rush hour traffic in Northern Kentucky’s hot growth corridor. Another expansive complex here with plenty of parking for 3,600-seat Clifford Borland Stadium with the entry on an upper level with the playing field and track below.
• Still in Union, we leave US 42 a bit south and head cross-country to Cooper High School on a quick trip where we’ve learned not to try short-cuts since we inevitably end up in a subdivision that we have no idea how we got there. Stay on Longbranch Road until you get to the home of the state finalist Jaguars and their 3,500-capacity stadium much like Ryle’s and marvel at how this town that didn’t have a stoplight when you were a kid now has two of the state’s largest high schools.
• Conner High in Hebron comes next. The second big consolidated public school in Boone County offers 4,500-capacity Fred Nevel Stadium for your viewing pleasure and there’s still a feel of the old Boone County here on Cougar Path right past the Greater Cincinnati Airport where it doesn’t seem all that suburban just yet but still a bit country. We must note that along with the 3,600-seat John Crigler Gym, Conner has the largest high school football-basketball complex in Northern Kentucky.
• In our final football field trip, we head down I-71 to the Verona exit for the Walton-Verona Sports Complex on Verona-Mudlick Road that reminds you of a county fairgrounds/public park setup for the Bearcats who play in a 2,200-capacity stadium that’s another modern, up-to-date facility in a Northern Kentucky that has so many of them these days.
• Our final two programs – Newport Central Catholic and Holy Cross – don’t have their own stadiums but both will play in excellent facilities. NewCath will use sister school CovCath’s stadium in Park Hills that we’ve already mentioned for the Thoroughbreds’ four home games and they’ll get to play Newport at their former home at Newport Stadium. Holy Cross will host the Indians’ four home games at Thomas More’s 4,500-capacity Republic Bank Stadium in Crestview Hills.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.