Dan Weber writes a sports column for LINK nky. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com.
His 2008 Rose Bowl poster is still right there – “Hanging on my wall,” Chris Norwell says proudly. The newly announced Thomas More University head football coach says it represents his journey from Anderson High, where he was a basketball guy to the tops of college football – Pasadena on New Year’s Day.
The result, against a USC program at the top of its game, wasn’t all that great for Norwell’s Illinois team. But the trip was. Which is exactly what 13-year TMU veteran Norwell has to offer anyone joining the Saints program in its time of transition.
At Illinois, Norwell’s transition from basketball-playing tight end to the school’s all-time leader in defensive lineman starts (46) and honorable mention All-Big Ten was complete. But his career ended after a couple of NFL free agent shots with New England and Minnesota. So he came home. But he knew he wanted to stay with football.
“I knew I wanted to stay in the game, if I couldn’t play, I wanted to coach,” he figured. That’s when a friend tipped him off to an opening at Thomas More, put in a good word for him and he got the D-line coaching job as a grad assistant and has been here ever since.
He’s been the defensive coordinator seven years but also spent time as coordinator of strength and conditioning and academic performance. “It’s not just football here,” Chris says of the more than 200 students involved in game-day activities (the team, the band, the dance team) out of an undergraduate student body of 1,500. “These are good people to work with.”
It’s going to take a lot of work, Norwell says of the transition 2022 season from the NAIA’s southern-facing Mid-South where some of the nation’s top programs reside to the NCAA’s Division II, where TMU has applied for membership in the Ohio-focused Great Midwest Athletic Conference.
“The Mid-South is very competitive,” he says. “It’s definitely helping us to get ready for the transition. Now our job is to get the players (currently 90 in winter workouts that started three days ago) to buy in, to get better every single day, to attack each day with great enthusiasm.”
One big upcoming day is March 15 when the Saints will get their first spring practice in three years after being caught between the NCAA’s Div. III no-contact rules and Covid’s forced change to a spring schedule a year ago.
“Our guys are really excited about that,” he says. The early morning workouts “develop a sense of team . . . the relationships we build here are important.”
“Our players know we’re really close,” Norwell says after a 5-5 season that saw TMU upset No. 22 Bethel (Tenn.) on the road only to fall at home the next week to unranked Pikeville in the final two weeks of the season. The final five games saw TMU allow just 10 points a game with Norwell’s defense but a 47-0 midseason loss to No. 1 Lindsey-Wilson also shows how far the Saints have to go.
The pluses, Norwell says, are “an area – Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati and Southeast Indiana” – where there are lots of football players and now some 500 TMU football alums, many in coaching, in the place where 80 percent of the school’s all-time alums reside.
“You can go to school 10 minutes from where you live, get a great education – and play football here,” is Norwell’s pitch. “And we have a great Saturday game day product . . . this is really a great place for a small college atmosphere.”
The brand-new turf field at the Griffin Family Stadium is a favorite of players, Norwell says, and a big advantage.
The fifth word in Norwell’s first quote accepting the job is “enthusiasm.” You can’t miss it in any conversation with him. “A whole bunch of enthusiasm . . . with discipline,” he says. Those are his watchwords.
*** PLAYING THE 10TH WHERE 9TH ONCE PLAYED: Northern Kentucky schools are outnumbered, to say the least, in what has become the reconfigured 10th Region in Kentucky high school basketball. But that isn’t keeping the old 10th (Mason County always seemed its natural home) from coming up to Northern Kentucky to accommodate schools like Scott, Campbell County, Bishop Brossart and Calvary Christian, once Ninth Region teams, for this year’s regional tournament although not without some controversy. Neutral Covington Holmes and the David Evans Gym will host the 10th Region Boys Tourney, March 2,3 and 7,8, that will feature Winchester’s George Rogers Clark team that right now looks to be the main statewide challenger to Covington Catholic. All they can hope for is as good a tournament as the Ninth Region had last year when Holmes hosted it. Scott will be the on-site host here with the Holmes people serving as hosts for the Ninth Region that moves to BB&T this year. The 10th Region Girls will be hosted at Nicholas County.
*** 9TH REGION ROYALTY: Longtime Northern Kentucky sportswriter Terry Boehmker has the latest edition of his online book profiling every Ninth Region boys basketball champion since 1947 available online with stories, photos, records and stats from the best of high school basketball around here for the last 74 seasons. Updated since the 2021 season, 9TH REGION ROYALTY is available for $12 here: https://payhip.com/9thRegionRoyalty.
*** GOING HOME HELPS DAVIS WIN ROOKIE AWARD: Despite a seven-game win streak, it took a trip back home to Detroit for Kailee Davis to earn NKU its first Nike® Horizon League Women’s Basketball Freshman of the Week award. Coming off the bench, Davis posted a career-high 14 points in a 74-54 NKU win over Detroit-Mercy followed by a 10-point effort at Oakland in a 79-67 win.
–Dan Weber
Photo provided by Thomas More Athletics