The A-Z history of NKY sports

Sports in Northern Kentucky has changed in a couple of obvious ways since we departed more than three decades ago before returning this past year.

The facilities are so much better, from BB&T Arena at NKU to the Florence Y’Alls Field that finally gave us a replacement for the historic Covington Ball Park that I-75 took away.

And there seems to be a whole lot more interest in our shared sports history hereabouts with halls of fame at every level from the original Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame to the high school athletic directors’ own hall of fame to those for both Thomas More and NKU as well as for almost every area high school.

All very good. As is the permanent display at the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Devou Park and the two murals on the revitalized Covington Riverwalk featuring the original Latonia Race Course along with fast-pitch world’s champs 1939 Nick Carr Boosters to the lone major league baseball team– the Covington Blue Sox of the “outlaw” Federal League.

The Blue Sox survived a couple of months in 1913 in 6,000-seat Federal Park, the tiniest ballpark by dimension of any major league team (smaller down the lines than the Little League field in Williamsport, Pa., where they play the World Series. It sat right where the Kenton County Circuit Court building is now between Madison and Scott, 2^nd and 3^rd Streets in Covington. The Sox lasted until the end of June when an average attendance of 800 forced the league to relocate them to Kansas City, realizing that then-population-55,000 Covington just wasn’t big enough to support it.

One lasting memory of those wild and wooly early days of pro baseball is the sports-themed restaurant in the neighborhood named after Walter “Smoke” Justis, starting pitcher the first game for the Blue Sox, a team whose logo featured a line drawing of a baseball player under the initials “BS.” Perfect.

But there’s a whole lot more to Northern Kentucky sports history than that. Take softball. The dominance of Northern Kentucky nationally and the string of world’s champions in men’s ASA slow-pitch are as incomprehensible — and inexplicable – as you could possibly imagine. How for the first 11 years of ASA World’s Championships producing true national champs, Northern Kentucky won six – and Cincinnati winning three — with the only non-area champs coming from Cleveland and Detroit. It started with Newport’s Shields Contractors winning the 1953 championship and Covington’s Lang’s Pet Shop in 1955 followed by Newport teams Gatliff Auto Sales (1956, 1963, 1964) and the Yorkshire Club (1959).

And while all these teams and players are probably deserving of a story here, we thought we’d cover as much of Northern Kentucky’s sporting history with a quick-hitting A to Z dictionary of people, places and programs you should know – or get to know – if you care about sports in Northern Kentucky.

So here we go:

A

ALEXANDER, SHAUN: Certainly the most honored and accomplished modern Northern Kentucky football player, the Boone County Rebel running back from Florence by way of the Alabama Crimson Tide, the 5-foot-11, 228-pounder was a seven-time All-Pro with the Seattle Seahawks (before finishing his career at Washington) and is the first player anybody thinks of when it comes to local football stars. He raised the level of play in Northern Kentucky by plenty. Named NFL MVP in 2005, Alexander set a number of NFL and Seattle Seahawks’ franchise records and was named NFL MVP in 2005. He was also named to the NFL’s 2000 All-Decade team. He ranks eighth all-time in NFL history for rushing touchdowns with 100. And when it comes to popular media, Alexander was the first athlete featured on the cover of both the NCAA Football and Madden NFL video games.

AKER, BILL: The first coach of any sport at NKU, Bill Aker took a club team that he helped find places to play and practice anywhere they’d let him for the Northern Kentucky Community College when it was in Park Hills and the program just played its way through to an official intercollegiate sport. By the time Bill retired in 2000, he had racked up 806 wins in 29 seasons as Norse baseball coach. In the process, he led NKU to a pair of early College World Series appearances (1979, 1985). He was also named Great Lakes Valley Conference Coach of the Year in 1992 and 2000. His 1977 team won a school-record 49 games, and his 1989 squad posted a 45-9 record and came within one out of qualifying for the NCAA Division II World Series. In 2001, the Norse baseball facility was named the Bill Aker Baseball Complex.  

ARCARO, EDDIE: The 5-foot-2 Southgate native became the greatest jockey in American racing history – the only two-time Triple Crown winner and winner of more classic races (17 Triple Crown races) than any other jockey, was the model for all who followed him. Tough and fearless in the saddle, he became a restauranteur and corporate spokesman.

ARNZEN, BOB: When the 6-foot-5 Ft. Thomas native took St. Xavier High to the Ohio state championship game, it so upset officials there they changed the rules to limit out-of-state players before Arnzen moved on to Notre Dame then just missing becoming that rarest of all athletes – a two-sport major pro league player. He played five years in the NBA and reached AAA level in baseball twice. Owner of the Old Fort Inn in Ft. Thomas.

ARNZEN, STAN: The longtime basketball coach at Newport High School and former pro baseball and basketball player was a man way ahead of his times – from his basketball offense to his incorporation of African-American players as Kentucky integrated officially in high school sports to his pre-game drills to the Wildcats’ uniforms. Did not have a single losing season in his 22 years at Newport. Had he not broken his leg as a top Reds minor leaguer, we might have been writing about him in a completely different context. 

AUGUSTA HIGH SCHOOL GYM: George Clooney played here. Not many of these places left that look like they could have filmed “Hoosiers” here but this balconied beauty built in 1926 and believed to be the oldest still in use in Kentucky has been so well-preserved that if you get a chance to see your team play in the Panthers Den, take it.

B

BARTON, BOB: Could have become a sharp-shooting guard for Adolph Rupp at Kentucky after his outstanding high school career but the San Francisco Giants swept in and made the 1959 Holmes High grad a “bonus baby” catcher who would spend a decade in the big leagues with the Giants, Padres and Reds. Would make his home in Southern California where he opened an insurance agency in the Inland Empire area after his baseball days.

BEAL, DICKY: Like Barton, a Holmes guard but Dicky was a flying speedster who would sign with Kentucky and take the Wildcats to the Final Four in Seattle in 1984 as a sophomore point guard after taking Holmes to the state finals in 1978 in a game that without a major officiating missed call, the Bulldogs probably win against Shelby County. Was one of the nation’s most highly prized recruits coming out of Holmes before signing with UK.

BEAGLE, RON: In the history of football, there have been just two awards that mattered given to the nation’s best college football player. One of them, of course, has been the Heisman Trophy. The other has been awarded by the Maxwell Club of Philadelphia. And that trophy, the Maxwell Award, was won by a Northern Kentuckian in 1956. His name? Ron Beagle. From Taylor Mill, Beagle wanted to play football so much he rode his bike from his home to Purcell High School in Cincinnati, then one of the nation’s powerhouse programs. Beagle would then move on to the Naval Academy at a time when the Midshipmen – with stars in the pipeline like Joe Bellino and Roger Staubach, also a Purcell player – could play with anyone. At 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, a physical Beagle played college football when players went both ways – on offense and defense. A two-time first-team All-American in football, Beagle was also a lacrosse All-American and finished seventh in the Heisman Trophy voting. He was drafted out of college by the NFL but would serve four years in the Marines first and then a knee injury suffered playing football in the service kept him from playing professionally. With a daughter who followed him to the Naval Academy, the Beagles were among the first father-daughter Navy duo. And with Staubach following him from Purcell to Navy, the pair both won the Maxwell, both were All-Americans and College Football Hall of Famers. Beagle was a successful businessman and football official in Sacramento, Calif., before his death in 2015.

BOOTHE, JIMMY: At just 5-feet-7, Dayton High School’s James W. Boothe, an all-state basketball player in Kentucky, led the Xavier Musketeers from his guard position to two straight trips to the National Invitation Tournament in New York and 37 wins his final two seasons as the hot-shooting Boothe averaged 13.3 points a game for his entire career earning “Little All-American” honors as a member of Xavier’s 1,000-point Club.” A 1957 honors graduate of Xavier and Athletic Hall of Fame member at Xavier, Boothe earned his master’s there as well before earning his doctorate in education. As his Dayton High Wall of Distinction plaque notes, “. . . where Dr. Boothe served for 32 years as a teacher, coach, and superintendent of schools. Following his retirement he began a second career at Xavier University where for 28 years he passed along his knowledge and experience to future teachers.” There is an endowed scholarship in his name for post-graduate candidates going for their higher degrees in educational leadership. 

BROCK, JIM: When Kentucky began to incorporate black high school sports and schools into the KHSAA in the late 1950s, Jim Brock was the coach at Covington’s William Grant High School and a man who made the transition work with his positive impact on high school sports here with his fast-paced Grant team. His first team with a young Tom Thacker almost pulled off a regional title won by a big, strong, veteran Dixie Heights team before his next team did win it. This was a great time for Ninth Region basketball. The head coach at Grant from 1955 until it closed in 1965, Brock would move on to coaching success in Cincinnati. He is a member of the Northern Kentucky Black Hall of Fame and the KHSAA Hall of Fame and the basketball court at Covington’s Randolph Park is named in his honor.  

BROWN, RAYMOND “WHITEY”: Whitey Brown was a fixture in the softball scene in Northern Kentucky – and the nation – for, well, forever. The ASA Hall of Famer from rural Kenton County played on three Northern Kentucky teams for five World’s Championships would crush line drives with his Popeye-like forearms that helped the professional wood-worker shape his own bats and then wield them with a perfect swing. A perfect gentleman Brown was still playing at the age of 80 and the 10^th slow-pitch player inducted into the ASA Hall of Fame in Kansas City.

BROWNING, TOM: The Edgewood resident – and just the third National League pitcher to throw a perfect game when he did it that historic Friday night in Riverfront Stadium in 1988 — joined his then congressman, Jim Bunning, as two-thirds of the NL pitchers to throw a perfect game in a century. Browning shut out the Dodgers 1-0, the only perfect game pitched on artificial turf and first in the NL since Sandy Koufax did it in 1965.

BUCKEYE LEAGUE: The best of Sunday Baseball in Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky meant Buckeye League Baseball where – despite the name — you could head out in the 1950s and 1960s to the perfectly manicured Ross Playground on Route 8 in Campbell County and see the best amateur baseball talent – much of it former high minor league guys and some ex-major leaguers – not to mention some who should have made it. Watching a guy like the legendary Walt Wherry warm up with his normal half-hour throwing was worth it even if you didn’t catch the game.

BUNNING, JIM: A senator, a congressman, a perfect game pitcher on Father’s Day in New York that had the Southgate native, Ft. Thomas resident and then father of seven but eventually nine on that night’s Ed Sullivan Show after his Phillies beat the Mets, the tough competitor from St. X High and Xavier University won more than 100 games in each league (also for Detroit) and was the lone man to pitch no-hitters in both leagues while doing so retired with 2,855 strikeouts, second all-time then in baseball history to Walter Johnson before being elevated to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996 by the Veterans Committee after a number of mostly New York writers blackballed him for not being nice to them.

C

CAPPEL, BILL: The man for whom the sports complex in Covington was so much more than a namesake. He played for the World’s Champion fast-pitch Nick Carr’s Boosters in 1939. He took care of Covington Ball Park, just blocks from his home, concession stand and all, for as long as it existed. He raked the field and then umpired championship Knothole games. He took you to eat at Frisch’s if you happened to be in the neighborhood. He pioneered giving girls and women the opportunity to play softball. He was the inspiration for the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame. And he may have been the nicest, sweetest, most gentlemanly and decent man in the history of sports – not just here but everywhere.

CAUTHEN, STEVE: Following in the footsteps of Eddie Arcaro, Walton’s Steve Cauthen, son of Tex and Myra, an exercise rider/farrier and a licensed trainer, gave Northern Kentucky its second all-time (out of 11 in history) Triple Crown jockey riding Affirmed in 1978 to all three victories over Alydar making him the youngest Triple Crown winner ever. “The Kid,” as he was known, was the first jockey to win $6 million in a single year as a 17-year-old in 1977 and then moved to England for 14 years where it was easier to make weight for jockeys and he would become the lone jockey to win both the Kentucky Derby and the Epsom Derby among his 10 British Classic wins. After returning home to Northern Kentucky, he bought his own thoroughbred farm in Verona near the 400-acre farm where he grew up.

CLAYPOOL, JAMES: A specialist in Kentucky and Northern Kentucky history, Jim Claypool, Ph.D., a former Beechwood and Centre College football player, had a special role in the history of Northern Kentucky University as the four-year school’s first dean of students in 1971 when he was a major part of the university’s decision-making to both create an athletic program and make women’s athletics an equal part of it, something very few colleges in America were doing at the time.

CONNOR, JIM: No one earned the title of “Coach” more than Jim Connor, who finished up a 42-year career here as head baseball and basketball coach as well as athletic director at Thomas More University, his alma mater and where the school’s convocation center is named for him and where his son, Terry, has succeeded his father as AD. Returning from World War II where he was part of the D-Day operation, Jim’s Newport Catholic teams won three regional titles in basketball and three state titles (1950, 1954 and 1956) in baseball. Jim’s teams won 558 basketball games and more than 800 baseball games while producing many outstanding athletes. Combining competitive and gentlemanly qualities in equal measure, he may be the lone coach to have produced a Rookie of the Year and an MVP in the NBA – Dave Cowens for the Boston Celtics – and a Rookie of the Year in Major League Baseball – David Justice — for the Atlanta Braves. Coach Connor also served as AD and coach at Bellarmine College and Boone County High School.

COVINGTON BALL PARK: No fancy name for the building – actually three of them – with separate roofed stands down the first-base and third-base lines with another behind home plate with a real press box atop it. That was the kicker – a real press box behind and above home plate. Guessing they held maybe a couple of thousand people, more than that for the standing room only crowds. The left-field wall, maybe 50 feet straight up of dirt topped by another 10 feet of fence is what you noticed first. Out behind the giant scoreboard in center field and over to right field was a bustling Pike Street, where the Dixie Highway-US 25 traffic in the pre-I-75 days never stopped. This was the center of a young sports kid’s world. You could get here from anywhere, even by bus. You could walk from the Ohio River, up Philadelphia from the flood wall. You could hitch-hike down the Dixie Highway or out Pike Street. And if you got here early enough, maybe you could carry Eddie Feigner’s equipment bag when the legendary King and His Court four-man fast-pitch softball team made its annual appearance against a Northern Kentucky all-star team. But you could also play your Knothole championship games here. And the hot dogs were great. It just did not get any better than Covington Ball Park, lost in the bad bargain that was I-75 coming through four of Covington’s never-to-be-seen-again ball fields.  

COWENS, DAVE: A product of Bellevue and NewCath, Dave Cowens was a late-developing 6-foot-6 athlete in high school known mostly for his rebounding. But after heading off to Florida State, the rugged left-hander grew into a 6-foot-9 body with the hustle that he’d always displayed as a smaller player even though it took the recommendation of Hall of Famer Bill Russell to get the Boston Celtics to draft a player many thought too small to play center in the NBA. Cowens, who averaged a double-double (17.8 points, 13.6 rebounds) for his entire NBA career, only added to the Celtics dynasty leading them to two more NBA titles while earning NBA Rookie of the Year honors in 1971 and MVP honors in 1973. He would also go on to become a head coach in both the NBA and the WNBA. He would also own a Christmas tree farm in Campbell County.

CRIGLER, JOHN: Out of tiny Hebron High School, the 6-foot-3 Crigler earned a scholarship to Kentucky from Adolph Rupp and rewarded Rupp with another national title – his fourth and final – in 1958 when Rupp’s “Fiddlin’ Five” won it all at Freedom Hall beating Elgin Baylor’s Seattle team. In that game, it was the senior Crigler who drove on Baylor, getting the Hall of Fame great into foul trouble while scoring 14 points with 14 rebounds. He would go on to become a teacher, coach and AD at Scott County High School in Georgetown for more than 40 years. The John Lloyd Crigler Gym at Conner High is named in his honor. 

CUNDY, TOM: Another Bellevue native who found his way to Florida State, Cundy was an outstanding tennis player who would parlay his Kentucky state high school title into one of the first athletic scholarships at Florida State as the school was going co-ed in the 1950’s and arrived there at the same time as his fraternity mates from football – TV pundit and ex-coach Lee Corso and actor Burt Reynolds, and baseball – major league player and manager Dick Howser. After college and the Marine Corps, Cundy would found one of the nation’s largest independent insurance and employee benefits agencies in Ft. Lauderdale where clients would include the world’s largest brewery, textile company, truck rental company, and multi-media company. He became a trustee at FSU and a fixture in his box at the US Open in New York and winner of the national Horatio Alger Award for success after his humble beginnings in Bellevue, where when he came home, he would meet friends at the Loyal Café, near the three-room home he grew up.

DAVIS, BOB “TWENTY GRAND”: On his arrival at Dayton High School in 1932 after having been the nation’s top college basketball player at Purdue, John Wooden knew he was at a football school when he met athletes like James Robert (Bob) “Twenty Grand” Davis. Davis was a football guy who went on to become a three-time All-SEC player (1935-37) at the University of Kentucky where he ran for a pre-modern record 2,083 yards, scored a record 180 points and twice had five-touchdown games. He then played for the Cleveland Rams (1938), the Philadelphia Eagles(1942), and the Boston Yanks (1944-1946) as a halfback, fullback, quarterback, and punter. The 1934 Dayton grad was one of the 13-person inaugural class in 1984 for the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors Hall of Fame. He was also a first-team selection at running back to the Courier-Journal’s All-Century team celebrating the first 100 years of UK football. 

DeMOISEY, JOHN “FRENCHY” and JEAN “FOX”: The brothers from Walton shared basketball and A.B. “Happy” Chandler. Frenchy, the older of the two, was also the bigger, becoming at 6-foot-6 an All-American for Adolph Rupp in 1934 leading the Wildcats to a national title from the Helms Foundation while going 50-6 in his three years at UK. Frenchy died at the age of 50 of a heart attack after driving Chandler, who did not drive and for whom he was executive assistant, “more than a million miles.” Rupp credited Frenchy with developing the first one-handed overhead pivot shot, a kind of hook shot, in basketball. Taking over Frenchy’s duties would be “Fox,” of Ft. Thomas, a former basketball coach and pharmaceutical rep whose son, J. Fox DeMoisey, would play basketball at Highlands and Davidson and as a lawyer in Louisville, represent the whistle-blower in the groundbreaking lawsuit against Big Tobacco. Full disclosure here: Fox and Happy gave me my first-ever state tournament tickets when I was in high school.

DEMOSS, BOB: Another Dayton High/Purdue connection happened with Bob Demoss, one of Northern Kentucky’s all-time great all-around athletes, earning nine varsity letters in four sports before heading to Purdue where he quarterbacked Purdue for four seasons including taking his Top 10 team into Ohio Stadium and beating the Buckeyes 35-13. He played a year in the NFL for the NY Bulldogs before returning to Purdue to tutor one great quarterback after another including Bob Griese for the next 20 years. He took over as head coach for three seasons then became an assistant AD for the rest of his career there.

DOUGHERTY, BOB and JIM “RED DOG”: Out of Bellevue, the football-playing Dougherty Brothers took different directions in their careers. Bob, the younger brother, went to Cincinnati, then Kentucky, then on to the NFL where he played for the LA Rams, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Oakland Raiders in a six-year pro career as a middle linebacker. The fiery “Red Dog,” after a starring career first at Miami, then at Cincinnati after turning down an NFL contract in 1943, as a running back, coached high school football at NewCath, Harrison (Ohio), Lloyd Memorial, Cincinnati Woodward, Colerain, Highlands, Mansfield, Ohio, as well as Xavier University in a 47-year coaching career where he made an impact at every stop along the way including taking Lloyd to a 1976 Kentucky state AAA title.

THE DRAUDS: Kenton County Commissioner Jon Draud, the scion of an athletic family that’s dominated high school sports hereabouts, started as a quarterback/catcher and then All-OVC baseball player at Eastern Kentucky before taking his Holmes High baseball team to the Kentucky state title in 1963 thanks to pitcher Gary Sargent’s strong left arm. While he was becoming superintendent at Lockland and Ludlow, son Scott, along with daughter, Kim, and older son, John, both now physicians but then athletes at Highlands and Covington Latin, were all making a name for themselves in high school sports here. The long-range-shooting Scott would set the Northern Kentucky career scoring record, before the three-point shot came in and before going on to average 11.3 points a game in 130 games at Vanderbilt including 43.8 percent from three-point range. He’s now No. 3 to his son, Scott, who broke his and Dixie Heights’ Brandon Hatton records last year playing for Beechwood but keeping it all in the family.

DUSING, NATE: The Villa Hills swimmer from Covington Catholic, where he won six state swimming titles and has the longest-standing event records from 1997, and then the University of Texas, where he was named the 2001 Collegiate Swimmer of the Year, earned a silver medal in the 4X200 relay at the Sydney Games in 2000 and followed that up with a bronze medal in the 4X100 freestyle relay at the 2004 Athens Games. Those are the only Olympics medals for a Northern Kentuckian in modern history.  

E

ELLIS, TOM: The man they called “Big Daddy” was as legendary and iconic a high school coach as it’s possible to be. A native of Calhoun, Ky., and all-around athlete at Western Kentucky University, Ellis earned four letters in all three major sports – football, basketball and baseball — at Western and the part of that story that is so amazing: He played in the first football game he ever saw. So maybe it should have been no surprise that when he came to Holmes in 1944 from Bardstown, he would coach all three sports – and serve as AD — until he retired in 1968. No one else even attempted that. So often did the Ft. Wright resident show up at Covington Catholic to scout the Colonels basketball games in the mid-1960s, they awarded him an honorary CovCath letter one night. 

ERPENBECK, LORI: When Kentucky started offering state volleyball championship opportunities to girls teams, the thought was that the big Louisville schools would dominate – especially in sports like volleyball. But that’s not how it turned out. This was a Northern Kentucky sport all the way with local teams winning the first seven and nine of the first 13 with little Villa Madonna Academy with its 158 students – but four on that team who would go on to play Division I college led by big, athletic left-hander Lori Erpenbeck – showing up the second year in 1980 to beat Newport’s Our Lady of Providence 15-4, 15-1 to complete a 39-2 season. Erpenbeck, who was named all-state in volleyball as well as the leading scorer and rebounder in basketball, would move on to UK on a volleyball scholarship where she would dominate the college game as well.

F

FELDHAUS, ALLEN: The Burlington native and ex-Boone County Rebel always looked like an NFL tight end but he served as something of an enforcer for Adolph Rupp’s Wildcats when they didn’t have all that much size on the court during his four years and 72 games from 1959 through 1962. There is the one legendary moment in the UK Invitational when he re-arranged Jerry West’s nasal structures on a shot-block attempt that always made the man they called “The Horse” seem a bit larger than life. He spent 27 years as a high school coach and administrator, mostly at Mason County, where he also owned and operated his own golf course, Kenton Station, with his son, Deron, before his death from cancer in 2017. Deron was a member of UK’s “Unforgettables” team that lost one of the great games in college basketball history to Duke on Christian Laettner’s buzzer beater in 1992. Two other sons, Allen Jr. and Willie, went into high school basketball coaching in Kentucky.

FLESCH, STEVE: The lefty from CovCath and the University of Kentucky is the best golfer Northern Kentucky has produced with nine professional wins, four on the PGA Tour, and $18,306,731 in earnings after making the cut 297 times in 464 events according to the Spotrac Web Site. At the age of 54, the Union resident is playing on the Champions PGA Tour after also doing golf TV commentary for Fox and the Golf Channel. After turning pro in 1990 and spending more than six years, mostly on the Asian Tour, before getting his PGA card, he’s finished as high as fifth in the Masters, sixth in the PGA, seventh in the US Open and 20^th in the British Open. He was named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 1998. A natural lefty, he started as a right-hander before switching back to his natural swing.

FOOKES, NELL: A legendary girls high school basketball coach for her 30-year Kentucky Hall of Fame career, Fookes preached hard work. “Nobody ever drowned in sweat,” she liked to say as a, and we quote her Hall of Fame citation, “high-energy coach . . . her energy was contagious, and her teams showed it.” Her teams made nine state tournament appearances, made it to the final four twice, with a 686-285 career record – fourth-best on the all-time KHSAA list. The basketball court at Boone County is named after her.

FOSTER, LEO: Mentioned the name Leo Foster to two friends recently and each of them said almost the exact same thing although about games years apart in their young lives: “Leo Foster hit the longest home run I ever saw . . . “ outside of the major leagues, each said. One was talking about a Knothole game, the other about a high school game. But both the same result. Leo may have been just 5-foot-11 and 160 pounds but the athletic Holmes High star infielder – and outstanding basketball guard – had plenty of pop in his bat as a youngster. Signing with the Atlanta Braves, he played five different seasons in the majors from 1971 to 1977 – also with the Mets – at all three infield spots. All told, he played in 144 games with 52 hits – two home runs — in 262 at-bats – just under a .200 career average.

G

GOODE, IRV: The man they named the football field at Boone County High School for – Irv Goode – went on from Florence to a career as a great two-way player for Blanton Collier at Kentucky before a 13-year NFL career – mostly with the St. Louis Cardinals – that saw him win Pro Bowl honors twice as an offensive lineman and one Super Bowl with the Miami Dolphins at the end of his career. He was named first-team All-American by Time Magazine his 1961 senior season and permanent team captain at UK. Mostly a center at UK, he did record 23 tackles against No. 1 Ole Miss as a junior. After playing in four postseason college all-star games, he was picked in the first round by the Cardinals. He also played for Buffalo. And in high school for his first two years at Covington Holmes, as a skinny 130-pounder he didn’t make the team. Finally growing enough to make himself an all-state player at Boone County, he would get his chance: “I absolutely loved playing high school football,” he told the Cincinnati Enquirer when he came in for the parade they threw for him in Florence the day they dedicated the field in his honor. 

H

HANS, JEFF: All Jeff Hans has done in his 11 years as head women’s basketball coach at Thomas More University is lead the Saints to a 282-24 (.92) record with seven conference regular season titles, eight conference tournament titles, nine national tournament berths with two NCAA Division III national championships and one NAIA National Tournament runner-up spot. As for this season, the nationally ranked No. 1 NAIA Saints were 21-1 to start the 2021-22 season. His 2014 team that finished 31-1, led by Player of the Year Sydney Moss, was the national leader in six categories averaging 94.4 points a game. The year before, TMU finished 33-0 with another NCAA title as Hans was named National Coach of the Year. Hans came to Thomas More from Northern Kentucky University, where he was the top assistant on Nancy Winstel’s women’s basketball staff for three seasons.

HAUCK, OWEN: The Ludlow native and Eastern Kentucky grad would be here even if he didn’t have 284 wins, a state championship and two runnerup spots at Highlands or the four times his Boone County teams finished second to Louisville teams after having thrashed Lexington schools. That’s because he was such a great person, a wonderful example for his players. When he learned that his son Glenn had intellectual developmental disabilities, Owen and his wife, Shirley, became leaders in the parental and volunteer community to make the lives of their son, and all children, better through organizing, fund-raising and creating specialized programs and schools. “Love you, Coach Hauck,” tweeted his star pupil, Shaun Alexander, on the day Owen died in 2016 at the age of 88. “Thank Jesus for allowing a great man like you in my life. You taught us how to fight & be a winner.” That’s because as much of a kind-hearted human being he was, Owen Hauck played smash-mouth football, going 31-2 against his 5A rivals in Lexington, featuring tailback-heavy power offenses.

HIGHLANDS FOOTBALL: Northern Kentucky’s iconic high school football program has had so many special players and coaches, so many special games at David Cecil Memorial Stadium that it might be worth looking at these numbers that make the Bluebirds one of the nation’s top five all-time high school football programs. With 911 wins against just 257 losses with 26 ties, a .777 winning percentage, the Ft. Thomas school trails only Valdosta, Ga. (936-259-34, .778), Louisville Male (927-333-49, .725), Massillon (Ohio) Washington (919-262-32, .748), and Mayfield (Ky.) (919-262-32, .770) in the No. 5 spot in the nation. In Kentucky, only Louisville Trinity’s 27 state championships exceeds the 23 of the Bluebirds. From coaches like Ewell Waddell to Homer Rice to Dale Mueller to an assistant coach Cris Collinsworth,  from players like Roger Walz to the Burt Brothers – John and Jim, to the “Hefty Lefty” Jared Lorenzen, Highlands has just had more of everything when it comes to football even if the ‘Birds have plateaued just a bit recently. 

HILS, MOTE: Martin “Mote” Hils was on his way to the most successful basketball high school coaching career in Northern Kentucky, winning an unprecedented five straight Ninth Region championships at Covington Catholic as he sent player after player on to college basketball before sending himself on as well when the then Northern Kentucky State College decided it would have a basketball program a year before it would have a campus in 1971. No players. No schedule. Nowhere to play. No coach. And it was late February. No problem, Mote told them. We’ll get it done. (Full disclosure: As a fellow CovCath coach, I told Mote that if he took the job, I’d help him as much as I could, which he did and I did.) We went out and found places to play, teams to play, players to play and didn’t do badly, nearly breaking even in Season 1, then moving on to winning the next season, getting into the NCAA Tournament by Year 6, splitting the first four games with Xavier, and just basically putting Northern Kentucky on the map. And all without having a real center. And no starter taller than 6-foot-2. But they could play. For Mote, they could. The first dorm at NKU was a house for the basketball players, paid for by the Norsemen Club. 

I

INDEPENDENT BASEBALL: For most of its history, Northern Kentucky – and the rest of Greater Cincinnati for that matter – were not candidates for minor league baseball with the Reds right there in Cincinnati. That just didn’t happen. Dayton, maybe. But nothing closer. And then MLB started really limiting the number of minor league teams it was going to sponsor. But that left lots of places – and players – with a need to come up with another answer. Hence the Florence Freedom, and the great ballpark to go with it that’s a plus for the entire community. And players and coaches who didn’t want to give up the game. And fans who are looking for a family night out that doesn’t require a bank loan. So it may be “independent” but it’s also Florence, Y’All. And it’s baseball. In the summer. And right here.

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JACOBS, FRANK: Joe Paterno wanted him. So did Lou Holtz. UCLA, too, among so many others to make the pursuit of NewCath tight end Frank Jacobs a coast-to-coast deal during the 1987 season. At 6-foot-4, 245 pounds, the three-sport athlete (also basketball and baseball) was one of the nation’s most desirable recruits back in those simpler times before the recruiting sites became the dominant purveyors of college sports information. Notre Dame won out for the first Mr. Kentucky Football who finished as the runnerup to Emmitt Smith as the National High School Player of the Year awarded by the Columbus (Ohio) Touchdown Club. and Jacobs ended up as a starting junior tight end who caught the last TD pass in the national championship win over West Virginia for the last Irish team to win a national title in 1989 before turning to his love for baseball – as a senior and as a pro. Although after five years, he made it to AAA in the NY Mets organization but never made it to the big leagues.

JONES, NATE: Drafted 179^th in the fifth round of the 2007 MLB draft out of NKU, Butler’s and Pendleton County High School’s Nate Jones would go on to post a 22-16 career won-loss record as a relief pitcher with a 3.45 ERA for the Chicago White Sox (for eight years), and the Cincinnati Reds, Atlanta Braves and LA Dodgers for arts of other seasons. Despite all sorts of season-ending injuries and surgeries, the 6-foot-5, 230-pound right-hander played professionally for 14 years, nearly 10 in the majors. His 318 strikeouts from 2012-2019 are third-highest for a White Sox reliever in that time while he’s third all-time for the Sox with 69 career holds. And his 8-0 record in 2012 was the best record ever for a Sox rookie reliever. He earned more than $13 million in his time with the White Sox. Has joined the NKU baseball program as director of player development now that he’s retired from MLB.

JUSTICE, DAVE: He came to Thomas More as a basketball player who had an outstanding career at Covington Latin. But the Cincinnatian left TMU as a baseball player, a sport his high school didn’t even offer, after a career-ending eight-for-12 doubleheader day in Crestview Hills where local and area Braves scouts – Larry Grefer and Hep Cronin – had prevailed on Atlanta personnel guru Paul Schneider to fly up and see the under-the-radar Justice in person. The rest, as they say, is history as the braves picked the 6-foot-3, 200-pound Justice in the fourth round and watched the sweep-swinging lefty develop into the NL Rookie of the Year in 1990, the second ROY for TMC Coach Jim Connor although his other ROY came in the NBA with Dave Cowens. In his 14-year MLB career with the Braves, Indians, Yankees, and Athletics, Justice hit .279 with 305 home runs and 1,017 RBI while winning two World’s Series. Off the field, Justice’s marriage and divorce from actress Halle Berry put him in the negative glare of celebrity gossip.

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KAISER, MAUREEN SHEA: From one of Northern Kentucky’s greatest-ever female athletes to one of its top girls high school coaches, the 1985 St. Henry alum and coach there for 30 years now after an outstanding college career at as a Notre Dame MVP and record-setting blocker, just keeps going on. Her St. Henry volleyball team won the school’s second state title this past fall as Shea Kaiser added to her own personal honor roll that started when she was earning 11 varsity letters and two state championships in track on top of numerous volleyball and basketball team honors. In 1985, as a senior, she was one of four female high school athletes in the nation honored with a Milky Way/Women in Sports Foundation Award.

KENNEDY, ED: The erudite Ludlow native and former CovCath basketball coach and player is considered one of the dozen “pioneering voices” who helped the NBA survive in the early 1960s with his work calling the Cincinnati Royals games and Oscar Robertson from 1959 through 1968 on both radio and TV. He has been described as “not your traditional play-by-play guy” and more of “a listener’s friend at the game.” Kennedy also did Reds games, and pre-game shows for the decade of 1961-1970, as well as Xavier basketball and was just a general presence in Cincinnati sports on radio and TV in those pre-Bengals days. Also served as president of the Bank of Ludlow.

KLEIN, ROGER: The godfather of high school tennis – in Greater Cincinnati and the state of Kentucky – put Bellevue on the map as the place to play tennis in Kentucky. He actually hosted the first seven Kentucky high school state tennis tournaments starting in 1945 at the Bellevue courts next to Gilligan Stadium, now named for him. His passion for the game, even in tennis-loving Cincinnati, had Klein well-respected by the elite of the sport such as nationally No. 1-ranked Tony Trabert of Cincinnati. Despite coaching his entire high school career in small-town Bellevue, he led his Tigers to three state singles championships, five doubles crowns, seven doubles runner-ups and 28 regional singles and doubles titles while winning 419 of 517 matches. After retiring from Bellevue High, the 1933 UK grad was asked to start the tennis program at NKU where his teams were a combined 186-165 in 14 years. 

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LANDRUM, RALPH: One of the more interesting sports stories ever to play out hereabouts came on the Saturday of the 1983 U.S. Open at Oakmont CC outside Pittsburgh when a young qualifier from Northern Kentucky, on a day when only one other competitor was under par, shot a 69 to rise as high as No. 3 on the leaderboard as he came up to the 18^th green and Jack Whitaker, calling the Open for CBS, leaned out of his booth high above the course and in his best stage whisper, asked a sports writer walking alongside Ralph: “Who is he, where is he from?” “The World of Golf putt-putt course in Florence, Ky.,” was the answer. And so it started. Ralph Landrum, the former Summit Hills caddy, had been a basketball player and golfer at St. Henry High, then a scholarship golfer at UK after it was obvious the 6-foot-2, 225-pounder had little chance of moving on in basketball. He would finish tied for eighth, his best finish in a major, but good enough to stay on the Tour the rest of the year and all the following year while earning an invitation to the next Masters. His best finish in his 1983-1985 PGA Tour time was a second-place finish at the Memphis Open. Today, Ralph is back at World of Golf as president and head teaching pro, ranked as the No. 4 teaching pro in Kentucky by Golf Digest. Both sons of Ralph and Mary Pat – Kyle and Joe – played college golf at Murray State.   

LEE, WILLIS: Our lone Owen Countian, Willis Lee, may be more deserving of a spot in this listing than anyone else here – and not just as a deserving athlete, but a Northern Keentuckian who combined his athletic feats into true military heroism – in both World Wars. You probably haven’t heard of him but you should have. Son of Owen County Judge and distillery owner Augustus Lee, Willis “Ching” Lee – and yes, that was the politically incorrect nickname his classmates at the Naval Academy gave him because his last name sounded Chinese, Kentucky marksman Lee represented the United States in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics after heroism as a WWI sniper in Europe. All he did in Antwerp was win a record seven medals – five gold – the most in a single Games for a record that stood for 60 years. But that wasn’t Lee’s most impressive starring role. As commander of American ships for the second and final day of the Battle of Guadalcanal (Nov. 15, 1942), Vice-Admiral Lee’s ships turned back the Japanese in what is considered a turning point in the War in the Pacific.

LORENZEN, JARED: The “Hefty Lefty: from three-sport star at Highlands who went from 13.3 pounds at birth to become a beloved University of Kentucky quarterback, the athletic, 6-foot-4, 285-pounder would become the heaviest quarterback in NFL history for his four years as Eli Manning’s NY Giants backup, earning himself a Super Bowl championship ring. In his final two seasons at Highlands, including a 15-0 state championship senior year, he would throw for a Northern Kentucky record 6,156 yards at Highlands before heading off to UK where he would set passing records there. After his NFL career, Lorenzen would be hired to coach quarterbacks at Highlands and then lead the Northern Kentucky River Monsters on two separate occasions as well as serve as commissioner for the indoor league. He was a popular weekend sports talk host in Lexington and the focus of a TV show about his battle with weight when he reached 500 pounds before losing more than 100. He would die at the age of 38 in 2019 from an infection impacted by his other health issues.

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MARSH, RANDY: Northern Kentucky’s only major league umpire, Randy was a former Holmes High baseball manager as a freshman on the state championship team and the son of long-time Kenton County Knothole Supervisor Bob Marsh. Randy’s umpiring resume is more than impressive. He umpired five World Series (1990, 1997, 1999, 2003, and 2006) serving as crew chief for the last three of those, becoming only the 10^th man to do so. He also called four All-Star games with one at home plate calling balls and strikes. Randy’s strike zone was considered small but very consistent, which mattered more than the size of the zone. After umpiring his first MLB game at home in Riverfront Stadium in 1981, the University of Kentucky grad would work through the 2009 season. He had been a crew chief since the 1998 season. In 2018, he would become MLB’s Director of Umpiring.

MAILE, DICK: The CovCath alum was a hot-shooting All-SEC college basketball player at LSU where the 6-foot-5 forward finished his college days as the third-leading scorer in LSU history after leading the Tigers in scoring and rebounding for all his three varsity years (1962-65) while averaging 17.4 points a game for his entire career. Dick would come back to Northern Kentucky and eventually become head coach at his alma mater as well as at Notre Dame and Beechwood. But ultimately, Maile may be best remembered as the scion of an extremely athletic family. One grandson, Luke Maile, is a longtime major league catcher, most recently with the Milwaukee Brewers. Another, Notre Dame All-American sophomore tight end Michael Mayer is a former Kentucky Mr. Football who seems destined for a long, successful NFL career. A member of the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors and CovCath Halls of Fame, Maile has also been inducted into the Louisiana Basketball Hall of Fame.   

MAZZARO, JOAN: For the first eight years of the Kentucky State High School Volleyball Championships, the Notre Dame Pandas of Joan Shadley Mazzaro-Epping were a fixture, from 1980 through 1987, playing in all but one championship finals. The Pandas would win five of those state titles including the first – in 1980 – and then three straight (1982, 1983, 1984) and finally again in 1987) while finishing runner-up in the other two (1985, 1986). As much as Northern Kentucky’s girls teams mattered across the board in KHSAA sports in the early years, none mattered more than the teams that played for Joan. The all-sport athlete from Mount St. Joseph, in her 13 years at Notre Dame, would coach basketball, cross country, golf and swimming in addition to volleyball, winning seven state volleyball titles in all with three runner-up finishes on top of 12 regional volleyball titles. Joan is a member of both the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors Hall of Fame and the LaRosa Sports High School Hall of Fame.

MCANALLY, RON: Looking for a local angle on the first Kentucky Derby he’d covered, a Northern Kentucky sports writer in Louisville was scanning the trainers’ biographies and came upon this line: “. . . came to California from an orphanage in Covington in a box car with thoroughbred horses . . . “ Well, OK then. That might do it. And yes, Ron McAnally, one of the nation’s all-time outstanding trainers, a certified Hall of Fame trainer and one of the most respected and well-liked men in the business, left Northern Kentucky as an orphaned teenager from his home – the Covington Protestant Childrens Home in Devou Park where he and his three siblings were raised on the death of his mother. He did have a connection, however, as his uncle, Reggie Cornell, was already established in the horse training business. By the time he’d reached his peak, Ron McAnally had three homes – one for each race track in Southern California to cut down on the commute. But the Air Force veteran and onetime electrical engineering student at the University of Cincinnati never forgot the Covington orphanage through the years with his financial support. Ron, now 89, would get to work in his early days with the iconic come-from-behind Silky Sullivan but the horse he’ll always be remembered for is John Henry, the three-time Horse of the Year he discovered as a four-year-old and would go on to win more than $6.5 million. In his career, his horses have won more than 2,500 races and three of them made it to the Hall of Fame.    

MOSS, SYDNEY: After four years away from Thomas More, Sydney Moss has returned as an assistant coach to the Saints program that she led to back-to-back NCAA Division III national championships in 2015 and 2016. The daughter of NFL Hall of Fame player Randy Moss was a graduate of Boone County High School where she won every conceivable high school honor in Kentucky high school basketball including Miss Basketball and every media outlet’s Player of the Year honor before playing her freshman year at the University of Florida and then transferring to TMU where she was a three-time first-team All-American and had her jersey retired in 2019. At TMU, Moss set the NCAA single-game scoring record (63 points) and tied the single-season mark (891).

MURPHY, DONNA: Like Moss, a left-handed Kentucky Miss Basketball from Northern Kentucky, Newport High’s Donna Murphy set the standard early on for girls high school basketball here as Kentucky’s first-ever Miss Basketball. Using basketball to move on from the sometimes tough Newport streets, Donna averaged 35 points and 20 rebounds as a Newport senior, becoming one of just two high school players invited to the US Olympic Trials. At Morehead State, she became the all-time leading scorer and rebounder and a Hall of Famer there before playing professionally for the St. Louis Spirit. After her playing days, Murphy became an assistant coach at Kentucky, Florida, Memphis, Cincinnati, Morehead State and then on to Asbury where she started the women’s program in her 11 years at the Kentucky college.

MUSSMAN, RALPH: Moved on from a career as one of the best – if not the very best — all-around athletes in the history of Newport High School to a post-college and post-coaching career in Newport City government. A member of the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors Hall of Fame for his play for the Wildcats in football and basketball, he led Newport to an honorary state championship in football in 1936. After starring at Morehead State in both sports for three years, was a WWII bombardier in New Guinea in 1945 before returning to coach with Tom Ellis at Holmes before moving on become recreation director in Newport as well as mayor and city manager before retiring in 1984. Also an elementary school principal as well as football coach at Newport Catholic.

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NICK CARR BOOSTERS: As the nation was looking to war coming to Europe, America’s fast pitch regional champions were descending on Chicago’s Soldier Field. One of those teams, the Nick Carr Boosters from Covington, was about to surprise the nation by sweeping through the field unbeaten behind Hall of Fame pitcher Norb Warken, nicknamed “The Cyclone” by a Chicago sportswriter the way he blew through the opposing hitters winning six games with five straight shutouts and 51 straight scoreless innings, allowing just 12 hits against 99 strikeouts. The only run he allowed was unearned. And while Warken resisted the lure of the nation’s top sponsor, Fred Zollner of the Ft. Wayne Pistons, who would also own an NBA team, other top Nick Carr players would move on to Indiana to join the top collection of stars in the nation. The first of those was Hall of Famer Bernie Kampschmidt, a strong-armed catcher who would win three more World’s titles with Ft. Wayne 1945-47 in a 31-year career although he said his “greatest thrill in softball was winning the 1939 championship with all the players from Covington, Ky.” Also coming from Covington was 5-foot-7 shortstop James “Boogie” Ramage, who had a strong arm and at one time owned five of the 10 offensive records for fast pitch. He and Kampschmidt would stay in Ft.Wayne, working for the company for 42 years until retiring. Well-known Northern Kentuckians on that Nick Carr team included Bill Cappel and Cincinnati Reds scout and sporting goods executive Charlie Leftin of Southgate.

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O’CONNER, BRIAN: After four years at Thomas More, the 6-foot-8 O’Conner was drafted in the eighth round of the NBA Draft (No. 177) by the New York Knicks after a four-year college career that saw him average 18.6 points and 10.5 rebounds a game with a senior season averaging 22.6 points and 11.4 rebounds, the third season he pulled down an average 11 or more rebounds. At Covington Latin, the Ft. Thomas native helped the Fr. Ed Heile-coached Latin team stay extremely competitive despite the fact that Latin students were two years younger than their opponents going straight from the sixth grade to freshman year. Brian is helping another TMU athlete, Dave Faust, coach the St. Henry basketball team and this year became part of one of the rare father-daughter Hall of Fame duos when daughter Lauren, after outstanding volleyball careers at Scott and UK, was named to the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors Hall of Fame.

OWENS, THURMAN: The Holmes High grad and longtime Northern Kentuckian was called “pound for pound, the best defensive lineman in UC history,” by legendary Bearcat and NFL coach Sid Gillman. But Thurman Owens was much more than that. Returning home after serving in WWII, Owens helped lead UC to a pair of Mid-American Conference championships in a UC Hall of Fame football career before returning to the Marine Corps for 23 years, rising to the rank of brigadier general and earning a bronze star with two legions of merit for his combat leadership in Vietnam. He would return to UC then to become executive director of the school’s UC Foundation while serving in a number of civic leadership positions in Northern Kentucky until his death in 2004.       

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PIKE, MARK: An outstanding player at Dixie Heights and Georgia Tech, the athlete some call the best ever to play at Dixie Heights, will be remembered more than anything for his longevity in the NFL that allowed him to play 12 seasons, all with the Buffalo Bills – 173 regular season and 20 postseason games – while racking up 255 tackles, the second-most of any special teams player in NFL history behind only the 298 or New England’s Larry Izzo. Pike, the son of well-known Northern Kentucky Baptist minister Harold Pike, died last month at the age of 57 after fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma complicated by Covid-19 and pneumonia. During his dozen seasons with the Bills, Pike played in four Super Bowls. The 6-foot-4, 272-pounder “was a nightmare mismatch,” said his special teams teammate Steve Tasker thanks to his amazing speed for his size and ability to make tackles despite forcing teams to double-team him. Said his coach for 11 years in Buffalo, Marv Levy: “Mark was not only an outstanding defensive lineman, linebacker, and special teams standout, but he was the epitome of all that I had ever hoped our players would be like.”

POTTER, TOM: We list Tom here as emblematic of all the under-the-radar, behind-the-scenes people, many we’ll never get to know, who make sports possible at every level – from Knothole to peewee to intramural to instructional league to high school. Tom Potter did his work as an unofficial full-time staffer at Newport Central Catholic whose job was to do whatever he saw the Thoroughbred program needed him to do. And he did it quietly and efficiently and with absolutely no fanfare from getting NewCath players scholarships to putting on the Top 24 Banquet to managing all-star games to jumping in as an official scorer, announcer, whatever was needed. Every school, every program needs a Tom Potter who died way too early in 1994, the same year the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors named their top award, the Tom Potter Distinguished Service Award, for him. The 55 names on the list – from team physicians like Dr. James Siles and Jack Brueggemann to half-century scorers like Holmes’ Gary Huhn to good guy boosters like Ludlow’s Benny Clary and Bellevue’s “Bones” Egan, to many more than we could name like Tom and Millie Faust, and on and on, we’ll let Tom Potter stand in for them all.

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QUEEN CITY UMPIRES: Standing in for all the officials here who make all the games possible, we’ll let the Queen City Umpires stand in for them with Northern Kentuckians like Dick Urlage and J.T. Mulligan – even Randy Marsh — the best of the best of those calling high school games. J.T. would get his degree a little later than the norm so that after an already full career as Dixie Area Knothole supervisor and championship coach, he managed to spend 37 years as a teacher, coach and athletic director in the Erlanger system at Tichenor Middle School and Lloyd Memorial. J.T. was honored by his inclusion in the Kentucky, Northern Kentucky Sports and Lloyd Athletic Halls of Fame, Knothole and Kentucky High School Coaches Halls of Fame. But we’ll always remember J.T. as one of our all-time Hall of Fame Queen City Umpires.

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RARDIN, DON: One of four Northern Kentuckians in the ASA Softball Hall of Fame for slow pitch and the third ever when he was inducted, Don Rardin played for five national championship teams (Newport’s Gatliff Auto in 1956 and 1963, Cincinnati’s Hamilton Tailors in 1961 and Newport’s Yorkshire Club in 1959 plus Lexington’s IBM in 1966 where he was an engineer, making him one of only two players to play on slow pitch national champs in both the Open and Industrial tournaments. Switching from infielder to pitcher, the Melbourne native and former Campbell County High School athlete won 234 games and lost just 39 in his career with a lifetime .606 batting average. Only once did he play on a team that finished lower than fifth in a national championship. By 1977, he was the owner of the Kentucky Bourbons Louisville team in the American Pro Slow Pitch Softball League and part of the first live sporting event on ESPN before the network had pro and college contracts and telecast a tournament game against Milwaukee. 

REINHARDT, MYRON: When the ASA Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City decided in 1973 it was time to induct slow pitch players, there was just one choice for the first person to earn that honor – Alexandria’s Myron “Riney” Reinhardt. Here’s the rationale for Myron: “He was a member of the team to win the first men’s slow pitch national championship, the first team to win the title twice, the first team to come out of the loser’s bracket to win the slow pitch national title and the first team to win three slow pitch national championships.” Having played more than 2,000 games in his 20-year career, the former University of Cincinnati track captain and top high school basketball official in Northern Kentucky started with the Sixth Ward Boosters fast pitch team in 1948 and ended in 1967 with the Stroh’s Beer slow pitch team having played in 11 of the first 13 slow pitch national tournaments. He batted .581 in national championship play and was a five-time All-American (1954, 1956-57, 1959 and 1963) as well as tourney MVP in 1955, batting .533 with four homers and helping his Shield’s Contractors team from Newport overcome a nine-run deficit in the final two innings of the championship game against the New York City champs. He retired in from softball in 1968 and went on to serve as an elementary school principal and deputy superintendent for the Campbell County Schools before retiring in 1988.

RICE, HOMER: The man who started Highlands football on the path to the its place as one of the modern dynasties in American high school football was former Bluebird and Centre College quarterback Homer Rice. His high school coaching record for the years 1951-61 at two Tennessee high schools and Highlands for eight years was an amazing 109-7-1. He would go on to become an assistant at Kentucky and Oklahoma, the head coach at Cincinnati and for two years, the Cincinnati Bengals, succeeding Paul Brown, as well as at Rice while being credited for developing the air option passing game offense. But the accomplishment that he most valued happened when he got his chance to be athletic director at North Carolina, Rice, and then for 17 years at Georgia Tech, where he developed and implemented the Total Person Program which is now the model for NCAA Life Skills Program that is in place at universities throughout the nation.

RISEN, ARNIE: The Williamstown native and Hall of Fame basketball player has one of the more unusual biographies in basketball history. Transferring from Eastern Kentucky to Ohio State, the 6-foot-9, 210-pounder nicknamed “Stilts” and “Beanpole” had one of the most consistent basketball careers ever – and a much more inconsistent life off the court. “A big scorer, a rugged rebounder and an all-around versatile player,” his official Hall of Fame bio describes him. He played 13 seasons with Indianapolis, Rochester and Boston while averaging a double-double from 1950 to 1955. And he would be the first player called for goal-tending even before it was against the rules when he caught a downward shot on the way to the basket one night in Indianapolis. Later, he would be discovered working construction in Rochester and living in a gas station after his basketball career before his son persuaded him to move in with him in Cleveland where he resided until his death from lung cancer at the age of 87. He would eventually work for better pensions for the original NBA players. On his death, former Celtics teammate Bob Cousy said: “We didn’t see each other often enough. He was a very sweet, gentle soul.” Arnie Risen has a street named in his honor in Williamstown.

ROUSE, LAYTON: The first basketball player to have his University of Kentucky jersey retired was the son of a dentist from Ludlow, Layton “Mickey” Rouse, who led Adolph Rupp’s teams for three years from 1938-1940. At 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds, Rouse was UK’s captain and an All-SEC player for one reason, according to Rupp, who surprised Rouse by awarding him his uniform at his senior banquet. “Leadership,” Rupp said, that was it. With a father and a brother who became dentists, Dr. Rouse would go on to earn his dental degree and practice for 40 years in Carrollton until his retirement. He would be inducted into the UK Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005.    

RUEHL, BECKY (AMANN): The Villa Madonna and University of Cincinnati diver got her start with Coach Charlie Casuto as an eight-year-old diver who never looked back in a sport she seemed perfect for. She would go on to win five straight KHSAA diving titles and six straight regional titles beginning in the seventh grade. She would win another six NCAA championships in three-meter and platform diving and five All-American and Diver of the Year honors before competing in the Pan-Am Games in Mar del Plata, Argentina, where she earned a bronze medal as a high school student and then at the Atlanta Olympics where she became the first Northern Kentuckian to compete in the Olympics. After finishing second on Day 1, she finished fourth, just missing a medal. And in the interests of full disclosure, as Becky’s uncle who started her out in diving, I’m more than a bit biased. But had she not had surgery for a rotator cuff injury before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, she might well have been the favorite in the platform. Along with Boone County’s Shaun Alexander, Becky was one of the rare first-ballot inductees to the LaRosa’s Hall of Fame for Greater Cincinnati high school athletes. In 1995, she was named Kentucky’s Outstanding Female Athlete of the Year, Kentucky Post Coaches Performer of the Year, the Phillips 66 Performance Award, and the United State Olympic Committee Diver of the Year Award. As the only female UC athlete to win an NCAA championship, Becky was inducted into the UC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005. She has a degree in graphic design.

RUTHSATZ, SCOTT: The Sandusky, Ohio native is the only Ninth Region boys basketball coach to win more than one state championship, something his Covington Catholic Colonels managed to do in 2014 and 2018, not so coincidentally the years his sons – Nick in 2014 and Aiden in 2018 – played point guard for the Colonels. As he moves through his 11^th season at CovCath, longer than he expected to stay here, Ruthsatz has a team that’s been as high as No. 2 and as low as No. 6 in the state playing maybe the state’s toughest schedule with 20 road games in the 30-game schedule against the best teams Ruthsatz could find in-state and from Indiana to Florida. His Colonels are still the unanimous pick to win the Ninth Region title although the state title looks like it’s very much up for grabs. That’s where Ruthsatz, who coached a year with the legendary Bob Hurley at St. Anthony’s in Jersey City, hopes the tough schedule makes the difference.

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SCHLOEMER, DOUG: Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball in 1978, the first ever from Northern Kentucky, Doug Schloemer had a storied career at Holmes High before he arrived at the University of Cincinnati. He had followed his older brother, George, who had an all-state career at Covington Catholic before moving on to Dayton, and his next brother Mark, a CovCath and Thomas More player, as well as a younger brother can. One of the rare three-time all-state players, the 6-foot-5 Schloemer led the Bulldogs into the state championship game against Shelby County in 1978 where they finished runner-up. A Kentucky Basketball Hall of Fame player, Schloemer would move on to a college career at Cincinnati as a “tweener” without exactly a position. But he would have one everlasting moment of glory. To this day, Schloemer’s 15-foot jump shot at Bradley on Dec. 21, 1981, ending the longest game in NCAA history in the seventh overtime, still stands. Schloemer had also hit a 16-footer in the sixth overtime to send the game into the record seventh. With no shot clock and no three-point shot and both teams holding the ball, just 22 points were scored by both teams in the seven overtime periods. No college player has ever played in a longer game – or ended it better.  

SCHNEIDER, BOB: Despite having to play in the tough Greater Cincinnati League for a number of his years on the job against much bigger programs, Newport Central Catholic Coach Bob Schneider managed to become Greater Cincinnati’s second all-time winningest coach in his 44 seasons, winning 345 games and three state titles (Class A in 1984, Class AA in 2005 and 2006. The NewCath and TMU grad was the KHSAA’s all-time winningest coach on his retirement in 2009 due in part to heart health issues although he stayed on as an assistant. In 1966, he took over a program that had been winning just 1.5 games a season. “Teaching, coaching and mentoring was his life’s vocation,” NewCath Principal Ron Dawn said on his death at the age of 82. “Coach Schneider dedicated his life not only to those he taught and coached but to the Catholic education of all the students at Newport Catholic and Newport Central Catholic. His legacy will live on at Newport Central Catholic through the Tuition Assistance Program that he helped to establish.” Schneider is a member of the Northern Kentucky High School Ads’ Hall of Fame as well as the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. The Coach of the Year Award in Northern Kentucky is named after him.

SCOTT, PAT: Northern Kentucky’s Pat Scott lived the actual life portrayed in “A League of Their Own” – for which she served as a technical adviser — as the star pitcher in the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League. Born in Covington, and then growing up in Burlington on a farm with its own baseball field, Scott had always wanted to play the game. Even though there wasn’t a place for girls. Until the AAPGBL came along in WWII. Scott’s first tryout earned her a spot on the Springfield (Ill.) team but her mother’s illness wouldn’t allow her to play. When the league called again years later, she was able to play, going 48-26 and a 2.46 ERA for three championship seasons with the Ft. Wayne Daisies. Honored at Cooperstown as part of the Baseball Hall of Fame Exhibit for the AAPGBL, she saw the Walton Community Park baseball field named for her and also the Behringer-Crawford Museum did an exhibit honoring her career. A UK graduate with a degree in zoology, multi-talented “Renaissance woman” Scott would go on to work as a phlebotomist, horse trainer, dog trainer, and Boone County Extension Agent with hobbies that included, golfing, fishing, shooting, archery, bowling, painting, and intricate wood carving as well as playing a number of musical instruments until her death at the age of 87 in 2016.       

SHIELDS, KENNEY: No one has ever bridged the Kenton-Campbell divide better, or crossed the Licking River more successfully than Kenney Shields, who grew up in Covington’s Main Strasse area near Goebel Park, went to St. Pat’s Grade School and Covington Catholic High School and then moved to a place – Ft. Thomas — he admits he didn’t know how to get to in college before he got his driver’s license. And once there, revitalized both the St. Thomas and Highlands High basketball programs before turning his attention in 1988 to a Northern Kentucky University program he twice took to NCAA Division II championship games. And through much of that time, Kenney kept his every-Saturday commitment to Covington kids that he’d made since he was a teen working with the Covington Recreation Department and the Covington Turners. And now, after the most basketball wins for a coach in Northern Kentucky history – 766 – Kenney could well be — if you’re lucky enough to get the call from the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame – the person greeting you and telling your story. No better person to do so. His book, “Nothing More, Nothing Less, Nothing Else,” tells the story of his coaching life experiences when he would tell his players to “Go out and do your best . . . nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.”

SIMON KENTON 1981: This Pioneers team will live on forever. Just when Northern Kentuckians had begun to believe it was never going to happen the way Covington Holy Cross, Covington Holmes and Covington Catholic had all failed to survive their state championship Sweet 16 games in the 1960s and 1970s, it was easy to believe that after 64 years, it just wasn’t going to happen. Not ever. Certainly not for a team from way out in Independence with a coach – Larry Miller – no one around here had ever heard of. Sure, they had three 6-foot-5 or bigger guys up front and a pair of athletic guards, but remember, they were from the Ninth Region. And we all know how that story turns out. Only this time it didn’t. In Rupp Arena for only the second time in the tournament’s history, Simon Kenton somehow evened up on all those last-second shots that always seemed to go the wrong way for Ninth Region teams, beating Knott County Central 64-62 in the first round, Virgie 84-83 in the second round, and Louisville Moore 71-70 in the semis. That left the Pioneers one more game to go against a near-Northern Kentucky Mason County team coached by Northern Kentucky native Allen Feldhaus in front of a then-national record high school crowd of more than 20,000, Troy McKinley Dave Dixon Billy Meier, Greg Ponzer, Sean Dougherty, and Alan Mullins would get it done once more with a 70-63 win. After all those years of not knowing the way to Independence out the 3-L Highway (KY 17), we were all Pioneers.       

SIMPSON, FREDDA: An outstanding high school volleyball player who helped little Villa Madonna High School to the second-ever state championship in the sport, she joined teammate Lori Erpenbeck as a scholarship player at the University of Kentucky. But that’s not the sporting accomplishment Freddie will be most remembered for. Nope. As an actress, she nabbed the part as Ellen Sue, the beauty queen pitcher in “A League of Their Own,” next to the likes of Tom Hanks, Madonna, Geena Davis, Jon Lovitz, and Rosie O’Donnell in the 1992 hit comedy-drama movie directed by Penny Marshall about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League where the women stepped in for the men who were away fighting World War II. After her movie and TV work, Freddie became an acupuncturist and healer with a studio in Charlottesville, Va.

STAVERMAN, LARRY: From Newport Catholic to Villa Madonna to the NBA, that was Larry Staverman’s unlikely path from Northern Kentucky to the big time. He was listed as a power forward, and anywhere from 6-foot-7 to 6-9 during his NBA playing days in a more than five-year career after being drafted by the Cincinnati Royals, for whom he played for from 1958 through 1961 and 1964 after stops with Kansas City, Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit that saw him score 1,237 points (4.7 average) and grab 1,013 rebounds (3.8 average). He then became the first coach of the ABA’s Indiana Pacers and later interim coach of the Kansas City Kings before resigning to take a job as assistant to the Cleveland Browns team president which had him managing Cleveland Memorial Stadium for the Browns and the Indians. He died at the age of 70 in 2007 at his home in Edgewood.

STEIDEL, STAN: Northern Kentucky has never had a more insightful, interested-in-all-the-right-things-for-all-the-right reasons high school athletic director than Stan Steidel, who never stopped working on ideas that could make life better for the athletes at small school Dayton, his alma mater, and other schools like Dayton. The result was the All “A” Classic basketball tournament for both boys and girls that he founded and eventually awarded millions of dollars in scholarships once it went statewide. He played basketball at Villa Madonna, served in the Army, earned his bachelor’s at UC and his master’s at Xavier then won more than 300 games in 34 years at Dayton. In 2018, the basketball court at Dayton High was named in his honor. He also became AD at Covington Holmes. Twice selected as Kentucky Athletic Director of the Year, he was listed as one of Kentucky’s 50 Most Powerful Sports People and in 2010, inducted into the National High School Coaches Hall of Fame. His sudden and unexpected death at the age of 78 in 2019 has been a tremendous loss to Kentucky – and Northern Kentucky.

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THACKER, TOM: Coming of age as a basketball fan in Northern Kentucky as Tom Thacker was coming on-line at Our Savior School in Covington and then Covington’s William Grant High School, it was our pleasure to watch the 6-foot-2 1/2 Thacker become one of the most impactful college basketball players of his era. With the University of Kentucky stuck in the segregated Southeastern Conference, Thacker chose Cincinnati where he became a two-time first-team consensus All-American as a shut-down, quick-handed, quick-jumping defender for two NCAA champion Bearcat teams who dethroned Ohio State’s Jerry Lucas-led Buckeyes and only missed a third straight title in overtime on a buzzer-beating tip-in. But that wasn’t the end of it for Thacker who would move on to the NBA and a championship there before moving over to the ABA’s Indiana Pacers, where he would get another championship ring – the first and only player to win an NCAA, an NBA and an ABA championship. With a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UC, Thacker would teach and coach the UC women’s team as he school’s first-ever black coach. Thacker, after “sitting out” a year of school, finished his four years in three thanks to summer courses at Holmes.

THOBE, JACK: The 6-foot-8 sweet-shooting Ludlow native was a top scorer at both Cincinnati St. Xavier High School and Xavier University where he graduated as the Musketeers’ No. 8 all-time scorer who led Xavier to its first NCAA tournament appearance. A Catholic High School All-American, he helped his St. X team to the No. 2 spot in Ohio behind only Jerry Lucas’ Middletown dynasty. After college, Thobe would become a sales executive for Goodyear, whose AAU basketball team he had played for after college, in Huntington Beach, Calif. Two of his sons, J.J. and Tom, would make it to the major leagues in baseball with J.J., a relief pitcher, getting a World Series ring from the Atlanta Braves.

TURNER, JOHN: Still ranked as the No. 8 all-time scorer and rebounder in University of Louisville history with 16.9 points a game and 10.6 rebounds in his three-year career from 1958 through 1961, the Newport native is remembered in Louisville for starring on the Cardinals’ first-ever Final Four team in 1959 that numbered two other Northern Kentuckians – Dixie Heights’ Howard Stacey and CovCath’s Roger Tieman. Just 6-foot-5 and 200 pounds, Turner played bigger for Coach Peck Hickman just as he had for Stan Arnzen at Newport. A member of the first Newport High Hall of Fame class, Turner also played football and ran track. But it was his 1953-54 team that Turner took to the Sweet 16 finals against Inez that is most memorable. For his final two years at Newport, the Wildcats were 24-2 each season with John averaging 21 and 25 points a game making him Newport’s all-time leading scorer with 1,965 points and winning all-state honors both seasons. In 1961, he was an All-American and MVP of the NCAA’s Mideast Regional. He played a year in the NBA with the Chicago Packers.   

TIEMAN, DAN: You would think that making it from Villa Madonna College to the NBA would be about as good as it gets for CovCath (Class of 1958) alum Danny Tieman but if you ask any of his students and players from his 46 years of teaching and coaching at his alma mater, his best career exploits lie there. The MVP for Villa Madonna in his final two seasons, point guard Tieman (1,454 points, 319 assists in college) was drafted by the ABL’s Kansas City Steers but he would get to play for pay for his old college coach, Charley Wolf, who brought him on for 29 games with the Cincinnati Royals that season. After his return to CovCath, he would record 314 wins before succumbing to cancer at the age of 72 in 2012. His older brother, Roger, would precede Danny by two years at CovCath and then play on Louisville’s first-ever Final Four team in 1959 as a three-year starting guard.

TOPMILLER, BILL: Maybe the greatest all-around athlete ever at CovCath, the quiet, unassuming 6-foot-2 ½ pass-catching wide receiver in football, tough-rebounding and jump-shooting forward in basketball and power-hitting baseball guy would be a terrific candidate for that honor. If nothing else makes the case, how about his selection as a first-team all-state football and basketball player in Kentucky as a member of the Class of 1971. His senior team averaged 83 points a game in going 30-4. In his three-year varsity career, he scored 1,156 points in 96 games (12.03 average) as the Colonels compiled a 107-9 record. His single-game reception record of 14 stood for more than 25 years while catching 41 passes with seven touchdowns before heading off to Vanderbilt where he would earn a degree in civil engineering and be a part of Vandy’s first bowl team in forever.  

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UEBEL, PAT: The story is that one day in his senior year at Bellevue High School, star running back and 18-time letterman Pat Uebel, who had led the Tigers to a state championship in football and was thinking of heading off to the Naval Academy in the fall, found a man sitting there in his parents’ living room waiting for him. The man’s name? Vince Lombardi. Yes, that Vince Lombardi, who was then a young assistant coach at West Point. So impressed were the Uebels, they kept the Lombardi-signed letter that ended: “. . . expecting a favorable answer from you by the end of this week, West Point is looking forward to having you as a cadet.” Pat played football all four years for Coach Red Blaik and ran track all four years as well, serving as football captain his senior year. And spent much of his time as a PR person for his beloved Kentucky home. After his required military service, Uebel took his engineering degree into private business ultimately retiring in Tucson. In the notice of his 2017 death to his West Point classmates, he was described as a man who “in 1992 cycled solo from Washington State to Maine, two months on the road. He stabled two horses for his children to ride. Played tennis, stringing his own racket. Fished, making his own lures. Hunted, making his own gun stock, and even filled the bullets. Ran marathons . . . Pat Uebel was a likeable, active, modest and decent man, much admired by his classmates.” He was inducted into the LaRosa’s Hall of Fame in 1992.        

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VOLPENHEIN, JIM: Greater Cincinnati’s greatest amateur golfer – he owns a record seven Tony Blom Metropolitan Golf Championships and the official designation as the 29^th member of the Cincinnati “Legends of Golf.” He’s won the Kentucky Tournament of Champions in back-to-back years, qualified for the US Amateur eight times and has two US Open Sectional medalist titles. The long-hitting CovCath alum also owns local course records at Hyde Park Country Club and Traditions Golf Club. He’s been named player of the year three straight times by the Greater Cincinnati Golf Association and in three different years, earned the same honors from the Northern Kentucky Golf Association. “I’ve met some of the best people in my life through golf, all over the world,” Volpenhein told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “It’s helped me in business. It develops character. I don’t think there’s a better game out there. I’m just blown away to be considered a Legend.”

VORIES, DICK: There’s no arguing the point in this description in the Newport High School Athletic Hall of Fame of Dick Vories: “Dick developed into one of the greatest shooters in Kentucky high school basketball history.” Scoring 1,873 points in four years as a basketball starter, and earning 10 varsity letters in all, he had his senior season ended early with a shoulder injury that kept him nearly inactive for two years and prevented him from signing with UK or signing a baseball contract. As a varsity basketball starter, he led Newport to 38 straight NKAC wins from 1955 to 1957. After healing, he would eventually sign with Georgetown College basketball, where he was a three-time All-American scoring 2,968 points – an average of 25 points a game – over his 125-game college career.

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WALTHER, PAUL: The Covington kid was so good that even CovCath fans claim him but he belonged to Cincinnati St. Xavier. The guy they called “Lefty” would go on to become a two-time All-American as a 6-foot-2 guard-forward at the University of Tennessee and then he followed that up as one of the early NBA stars. The alum of St. Benedict’s Grade School, Walther, the third of six children, teamed up with Northern Kentuckians Charley Wolf and Charley Steenken to win 22 straight games in 1944. He may have been the youngest basketball All-American when he was named for the first time at the age of 17. He played for the Minneapolis Lakers, Indianapolis Olympians, Philadelphia Warriors, and Ft. Wayne Pistons in his NBA career as well as in the 1952 NBA All-Star Game before going on to become Managing Director of Institutional Sales in the Chicago regional office of Merrill Lynch. He died in 2014 in Atlanta at the age of 87.

WALZ, ROGER AND FAMILY: The scion of one of Kentucky’s most important sports families, the former Highlands and UK quarterback, Highlands coach and AD, just seems like he’s always been around. He led the 1959, 1960 and 1961 Bluebirds to the 2A state championship games that got the dynasty going as Highlands went 35-1 with the only loss to Henderson in the 1959 title game. Walz would lead Highlands to the 1975 championship in 3A as coach. He and daughter Jaime Walz-Richey, a basketball star with the Bluebirds, both are in the Highlands Hall of Fame. Walz-Richey, the girls basketball coach at Highlands whose husband Brian is the boys golf coach, was named Parade Magazine National Player of the Year, Gatorade Circle of Champions and Kentucky’s Miss Basketball in 1996. She holds the state scoring record (4,948 points) and played at Western Kentucky and is the head of the Business Department at Highlands. And then there’s brother Jeff Walz, the Louisville women’s basketball coach and one of the most influential college coaches in America. And finally, there’s Janine Thoeny Walz, wife of Roger and mother of Jaime and Jeff, who was inducted this year into the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors Hall of Fame as a pioneering female athlete in Northern Kentucky winning the regional in tennis five straight years for Bellevue.

WEYER, JIM: When you think of Thomas More/Villa Madonna coaches, it’s easy to skip from Charley Wolf, who left for the NBA in 1958 and Jim Connor, for whom the Convocation Center was named. Two very strong men who mattered. But it’s easy to overlook the man who kept it all together for Villa Madonna in those 21 years between the time the Rebels/Saints had no real campus or place of their own to play or practice. That man was NewCath and Villa Madonna alum Jim Weyer, a har-charging guard who combined basketball and baseball coaching duties with those of AD. It wasn’t easy but Jim, who died in early January at the age of 85, would then move on to 20 more years as AD at Newport High. He got it done while keeping Villa Madonna competitive.  

WHERRY, WALT: Northern Kentucky may have produced four of the first 10 ASA Slow Pitch Softball Hall of Famers but as the official ASA site noted: “Walt Wherry was perhaps the most talented of all of the great Northern Kentucky players from this era. He was named All American four times, for three different positions (1954-55 outfield, 1958 shortstop, 1959 pitcher). He was a world champion three times (1955, 1959, 1963). His arm was legendary in the area, as he would win the throwing contest that was held every year at the Covington Ball Park. In 1956, he played with the defending world champion Lang’s during the season, but was away pitching semi-pro baseball during the world tournament. He also missed the 1957 world tourney for the same reason.” Right on the money. Covington’s own Walt Wherry was what Walt Wherry was. Unbelievably talented. Unbelievably mercurial. Had he wanted to play major league baseball, he could have. And would have for a long time but got into a dispute with the Pittsburgh team that held his AAA contract and never looked back. Today, with the money and an agent, his arm would have made him millions. One of the all-time interesting characters in Northern Kentucky sports.

WIGGINS, HAL: The seventh slow pitch player inducted into the ASA Softball Hall of Fame, Hal Wiggins had a 31-year career that saw him playing for all the top Northern Kentucky teams with his clutch hitting and solid defense in the outfield. Wiggins played in 15 ASA World’s championships, 12 in slow pitch while winning four national championships including the very first one for Newport’s Shields Contractors along with Lang’s Pet Shop (1955) and Joe Gatliff Auto Sales (1957 and 1963). Hal, who passed away from cancer in 1996, played on four runner-up teams, three that finished third, one that finished fourth and a fast pitch team that finished fifth. His slow pitch teams were 68-23 in national championship play. As for Wiggins himself, he hit .428 in the slow pitch national games he played in. Three times he was named an ASA All-American: 1956 (.666 batting average); 1961 (.650 batting average) and 1963 (.519 average, two homers). In his 31-year career, Wiggins estimated he played more than 5,000 league and tournament games. His greatest thrill, he said, was coming back in 1963 when his Gatliff team was 12 runs down going into the bottom of the sixth and came back to win 13-12. In January of 1985, he was inducted into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame.

WINSTEL, NANCY: Here’s what NKU’s David Lee Holt Athletic Hall of Fame has to say about 2013 inductee Nancy Winstel: “. . . led NKU to a pair of NCAA Division II national championships (2000 and 2008) and finished with a record of 636-214 as the Norse head coach. She was named the national coach of the decade by Women’s Division II Bulletin in 2009, and her basketball program was also tabbed the best during that decade by that same publication. A six-time Great Lakes Valley Conference Coach of the Year, Winstel was named the WBCA Division II National Coach of the Year in 1999-2000 after leading NKU to its first national title. The Norse posted a 32-2 record that season and won 24 consecutive games en-route to the school’s first-ever national championship. Winstel played for then-Northern Kentucky State College’s first women’s basketball team in 1974 and scored 787 career points in three seasons. Winstel also averaged 8.3 rebounds per game during her playing career.”

WOLF, CHARLEY: No way to pick one when it comes to what you need to know about Covington native Charley Wolf’s athletic contributions even if the former St. Xavier High athlete did go on to coach two NBA teams – the Cincinnati Royals with all-time great Oscar Robertson as well as the Detroit Pistons from 1960 through 1966. He also coached Villa Madonna basketball before that. Charley – with his wife Loraine – produced six sons — Marty, Steve, Greg, Jeff, Daniel and David. who would go on to become St. X Bomber basketball captains, playing for a team whose nickname Charley and his Notre Dame quarterback bud George Ratterman caused to replace the Conquerors with their long-range aerial bombs. A football and baseball star who played in the Reds organization, Wolf turned to tennis later in life and his sons followed suit – not to mention the grandsons, adding tennis to their basketball resumes in college. When Ohio changed its rules to forbid Kentuckians playing high school sports there, the Wolf family moved from Kentucky across the river.

WOLFE, DONNA: One of the most versatile women in slow pitch softball history, Hall of Famer Donna Wolfe from Covington had one of the greatest careers in women’s slow pitch softball. Playing for 20 years and in 13 national championships, Wolfe was an ASA All-American five times at four different positions – left field, shortstop, short center, and second base. She had a .484 national championship batting average for teams like champions Dana Gardens, Escue Pontiac, Rutenschroer Florists, Riverside Ford, and Sweeney Chevrolet that compiled a 65-12 record. Wolfe retired from softball in 1975 to her teaching position in physical education at Covington Holmes.

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XAVIER ALUM: OK, this is a trick to get an “X” entry but the man we selected as the most representative Northern Kentucky Xavier University athlete is not – Newport’s Al Howe. “A member of the Legion of Honor,” his Xavier Hall of Fame plaque describes the four-year football letterman from the Class of 1939. An all-state Kentucky performer in football as a center and basketball as team captain at Newport, he was the first Kentucky player named to the LaRosa’s High School Hall of Fame. A four-year starter in both sports at Xavier, he started every game his final three years while leading Xavier to what has been described as a “stunning” 26-7 upset of Kentucky. At Newport Central Catholic High School from 1946 through 1951, Al served – without pay – as the head football and basketball coach after working his regular job. One of his basketball teams finished 24-2, the best record in 25 seasons. He served four years in WWII in the China-Burma-India theater and also coached the Air Service Command football team there. He was twice elected Campbell County sheriff (1953, 1969).  

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YEAGER, JASON:  One of the two most successful Northern Kentucky tennis players in the last three decades, the 1991 Dixie Heights grad won KHSAA singles state championships in 1989 and 1990. Since then, Northern Kentuckians have won just three singles titles with CovCath’s Jimmy Roebker winning two, like Yeager, in 2009 and 2010, and CovCath’s Austin Hussey another in 2013. Yeager, who went on to a successful college career at Kentucky, would spend a year on the ATP World Tour, rising to No. 891 in doubles and 1,096 in singles after being ranked as high as No. 17 in college doubles at UK. After winning four titles (two singles) in the Cincinnati Metropolitan tournament, he was named one of Cincinnati’s all-time Top 100 players and inducted into the Cincinnati Tennis Hall of Fame. He’s now directing the company his father, John, created, Ashley Builders in Edgewood. 

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ZIEGLER, ED: Those were the days my friend, when Newport Central Catholic — then just plain Newport Catholic — could compete in one of the nation’s top high school football conferences — the Greater Cincinnati League. The Thoroughbreds could do it for one reason: they had athletes like All-American Ed Ziegler who would go right from Newport to a place like South Bend and Notre Dame and fit right in. Ziegler, a quick, strong 6-foot, 213-pound running back, did more than fit in. He arrived at Notre Dame in 1966 when Ara Parseghian would win a national title and Ziegler would lead the Irish freshmen. Knee injuries cut short his next two years but as a senior, Ziegler emerged as Notre Dame’s go-to running back even though the injury would prevent him playing in the NFL. But it would not keep him from going on to more success after football as a distinguished professor and internationally recognized legal scholar — now retired — at the University of Denver where he authored some of the definiitive articles and a five-volume series on land use regulation and zoning and planning with his work having been cited in appellate courts in all 50 states. And if you were looking for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, he might just have been found fly fishing in the Rockies with his buddy, Prof. Ziegler.