By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
They’re all alone out in Erlanger, these Lloyd Juggernauts are.
No local rivals, not really. Of Kentucky’s 40 Class 3A teams, Lloyd is the only one in Northern Kentucky with Carroll County the nearest 3A team.
The Juggs are not a big 5A and 6A county school like the ones in Kenton, Campbell and Boone.
They’re not one of the small Class A river towns with a long football history like Ludlow, Bellevue and Dayton.
And, if you talk to senior quarterback Kaleb Evans, you’ll learn that they’re “the only Juggernauts in the entire nation.” No other team uses that nickname arising from a giant Hindu religious pageant wagon honoring the deity Jagannath that was unstoppable and overwhelming but mispronounced by the colonial British as “Juggernaut.”
Now it’s just the latter meaning that survives. “Unstoppable and overwhelming,” Evans says with a big smile. That works for the folks in Erlanger.
But if there’s one thing Lloyd’s Juggernauts have with their one-of-a-kind nickname, it’s this: While other teams can’t aspire to be Bluebirds or Wildcats or Panthers or Jaguars or Raiders in real life, the Lloyd players can hope to come together, work hard and become a juggernaut.
Even if they are pretty much alone, or almost all alone, at 10-0 in Northern Kentucky along with Class A Holy Cross, after clobbering 5A neighbor Boone County, 45-7, in the chill and fog Thursday at Cecil Dees Field in Erlanger.
Lloyd coach Kyle Niederman agrees as to how his Juggs sometimes seem to get overlooked despite their record. “We’re so independent that we’ve somewhat embraced that, turned it into a positive,” he says.
“We are all alone . . . All we have is us,” he tells his team. “All you have is you.”
“I don’t think we need a rival,” said junior Avery Conrad, who did just about everything a player can do on offense, defense and special teams with TD runs from 28 and 35 yards and a blocked punt for starters. “I just need to keep doing everything I’ve been taught by our coaches.”
But don’t let that 45-0 first half get his team too excited, Evans says, before the backups came on after intermission. “We made too many mistakes,” he said of that buzz-saw start against Boone and the running clock that resulted.
Niederman’s postgame comments were directed at what his players have been able to do for this entire season in rolling up a 416-139 scoring edge over opponents (an average 41.6-13-9 score) with just one game with a margin of less than 13 points.
“I’m extremely proud,” Niederman told them. “Very selfishly so. I want to thank you guys. In 27 years of coaching, I’ve never been undefeated.”
As for Lloyd, it’s been 30 years since the Juggs went 10-0. And in a halftime ceremony, the school’s 1965 state champion team was saluted for its accomplishment 60 years ago.
“It was an honor,” junior lineman Aiden Dolan said, for his team to share the field with the school’s initial state champs. “But we’re not worrying about that. We want to be ourselves. It’s not about 10-0. We need to be 1-0 every week. It’s what we’ve worked for every week since January.”
“Definitely our goal right now is to not settle but to get to Kroger Field for a state championship,” says Evans, the veteran senior quarterback who has led the Juggs the last three seasons.
Having moved their RPI ranking to No. 2 in Class 3A behind Christian Academy of Louisville, Lloyd has earned home field advantage through the semifinals, not like the last two years when the Juggs had to go on the road in the second week.
Lloyd opens against Bath County (1-7) next Friday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. in the playoffs.
SCORING SUMMARY
Boone County 0 0 7 0—7
Lloyd Memorial 26 19 0 0—45
Lloyd: Conrad 35 run (Miller PAT kick good)
Lloyd: Tomlinson 9 run (PAT fails, bad snap)
Lloyd: Jones pass from Evans (PAT pass fails)
Lloyd: Conrad 28 run (Miller kick good)
Lloyd: Jones 13 run (PAT kick blocked)
Lloyd: Tomlinson 11 run (Miller PAT kick good)
Lloyd: McClendon 3 run (No PAT after running clock expired at halftime)
Boone: Coughenour 37 pass from Goodridge (PAT kick good)
