By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
It was a moment 91 years in the making for the Newport Central Catholic community.
And according to the response of the crowd assembled on “The Hill” Tuesday to catch a first glimpse, maybe well worth the wait.
“A dream come true” for a football program that started in 1935 finally has a home, said new NewCath football coach Terry Brown, proud and happy and pleased and looking to the future for this school with a great history but that’s struggled recently with the migration to the suburbs.
“Wow,” said Brown, a player on the Thoroughbreds’ 2005 state championship team. “You come up the hill and there’s a “wow’ factor . . . words don’t describe this facility” with its offices for the AD and coaches, a training room and multiple locker rooms and a seating capacity of 1,500.
The Ciafardini Family Athletic Complex is the official name, recognizing the generosity of Tony Ciafardini and family in making it happen. And for being a big part of NewCath’s Looking Up Campaign that has now raised more than $16 million with more than 900 donors since its 2019 inception.
And now no more will NewCath continue its tradition of playing every game on the road for nearly a century. “Even the home games,” Brown nodded. For more than three decades, NewCath was the only Catholic high school in Northern Kentucky with football and then as Covington Catholic, Bishop Brossart and St. Henry came online, all had new fields that would come with the new sport.
But NewCath had its history.
As the only one that’s produced three alums who went on to play for Notre Dame. One, starting running back Ed Ziegler who died a few months ago after becoming a renowned international law expert and another, Frank Jacobs, who played for Notre Dame’s last national champs, scoring a TD in the championship game.
A program that produced the winningest coach in Northern Kentucky high school football in the late Bob Schneider, whose 345 wins are seventh-most in all Kentucky history. No wonder the brand new turf here will be forever “Robert Schneider Field.” And that included seven seasons, from 1965 through 1871, when NewCath competed in the Greater Cincinnati League, at the time as powerful a high school football league as any in the country.
It’s a program that has won four state championships, 15th best all-time among Kentucky’s 220 football-playing schools and more than all but three other Northern Kentucky high schools.
But if the history is one to be proud of and highlighted, the future – starting from today — and the spectacular views in every direction, from the Cincinnati skyline to I-471 as it heads to the hills, is hard to beat. The Newport Pavilion and the Newport Malls I and II bustle with traffic below.
But it’s the traffic here, from the football and soccer games and the bright blue six-lane track that’s about to be completed with a large college quality press box overlooking everything.
NewCath principal Dr. Kenny Collopy, a former pitcher for the Thoroughbreds, agrees with Brown that the “spacing” on top of this hill was always the issue. Was there enough land up here? “Short left field fence, short right field,” Collopy recalls. So “we left it up to the professionals” to decide.
And they came back with the verdict. “There was room,” they said. There would have to be a couple of retaining walls, 30 feet high with 94 pillars buried holding everything in place. But there was more room than anyone had imagined, including himself, Collopy said. That was the “aha” moment.
“I always believed we could do it,” Collopy said. He just wasn’t sure where and how, exactly. And then it happened. “I didn’t realize we had this much land.”
“This will most of all be a place for building character,” said Diocese of Covington Bishop, the Most Reverend John C. Iffert, who celebrated the dedication Mass on the field for the first major educational project started on his arrival some four-and-a-half-years ago.
The hope here is that it does more than that. This year’s co-ed graduating class numbers just 35. But next year’s incoming freshmen class is right at 78-79, Brown says. “More than double.” And Brown expects some 50 or so football players to work with, counting the freshmen.
So the Bishop was on the money when he described the new complex as “a beacon on a hill.”
Make that “on The Hill,” as the NewCath community likes to call this place they call home.