By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Highlands coach Bob Sphire must have had a premonition about this game.
Last month, as Sphire tells it, on his Bluebirds’ Friday off, which was also his anniversary, he chose to drive downstate and scout a top Class 4A team instead of taking his wife out.
That team? Corbin’s Redhounds. The Highlands’ coach was more than impressed with what he saw. Called them “a state championship caliber team” and in a loaded Class 4A, that’s saying something. Said they might be more versatile and challenging on offense than any team Highlands had played. And the Birds had played Ohio No. 1 Elder.
“And No one was talking about them,” Bob said, echoing the postgame words of Corbin linebacker Ed Pietrowski.
“Everybody doubted us, who’s next,” Pietrowski said in the joyous huddle of players, coaches and fans at midfield after the Redhounds’ 35-21 regional championship win that ended Northern Kentucky’s 4A hopes just minutes after Northern Kentucky’s other top 4A team, Covington Catholic, fell at Boyle County.
‘Now do you believe it?” Corbin Coach Joshua Sammons asked his players. “All that matters is you’re playing your best football in November.”
Unfortunately for Highlands, on a night that started and ended in thick fog rolling in onto drizzly, rainy David Cecil Stadium with as many Corbin fans in attendance as folks from Fort Thomas, this was not the Bluebirds’ best game.
“We had lots of opportunities,” Sphire said. But often didn’t cash in on them. And almost never had the answer for a precise, tough, quick, and extremely well-executed veer-T that Sphire said was the first time he’s had to face that classic old offense in his five years at Highlands.
“We didn’t have our ‘A’ game,” Sphire said as the Birds dropped pass TD chances early while “they (Corbin) played a great game,”
Indeed, the Redhounds gained 355 yards on the ground, another 40 in the air to Highlands’ 290 total (158 passing, 132 rushing) and jumped out to a 21-7 first-half lead that saw Highlands never able to threaten after that. “We just couldn’t get them off the field,” Sphire said, stopping Corbin just one drive each half.
It wasn’t enough. “We’d have had to play a perfect game,” Sphire said. Pretty much the way Corbin did, twisting and turning, churning their legs, looking for their downfield blockers that always seemed to be there for extra yards.
And taking advantage of whatever came their way, like converting a fourth-and-21 for a 37-yard Mason Salmons to Cole Stevens screen pass.
Stevens led Corbin with 145 yards on 22 carries while quarterback Salmons – the coach’s son – added 102 on 13. Cam Estep ran for another 61 on eight carries.
“And they didn’t turn the ball over,” Sphire said, something Highlands did twice on interceptions played perfectly by the aggressive Hounds’ secondary.
But if there was one big difference in this game – the thing Corbin did the best and Highlands maybe not so well on this night – was tackling. Corbin made open-field takedowns that came their way with authority. Highlands did not.
For the Birds, Tayden Lorenzen gained 90 yards on 10 carries while Rio Litmer threw for 127 yards and two TD on 13 of 28.
“Take care of each other,” Sphire told his team as tears and hugs dominated in the postgame on-field huddle as fans and family circled the Bluebirds.
But this loss “doesn’t take anything away” from what the Bluebirds accomplished in their 10-3 season, Sphire said. “But it hurts.”
SCORING SUMMARY
CORBIN 7 14 0 14–35
HIGHLANDS 0 7 0 14—21
Corbin: Salmons 54 run (Witherington PAT kick good)
Corbin: Stevens 37 pass from Salmons)
Highlands: Nieman 4 run (Anderson PAT kick good)
Corbin: Person 1 run (Witherington PAT kick good)
Corbin: Estep 2 run (PAT kick blocked)
Highlands: Kremer 10 pass from Litmer (Anderson PAT kick good)
Corbin: Estep 2 run (2-pt PAT pass good)
Highlands: Harris 10 pass from Litmer (Anderson PAT kick good)
