Dan Weber writes a sports column for LINK nky. Contact him at dweber3440@aol.com.
For special guest speaker Dick Murgatroyd, Wednesday’s Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame Induction was a time for recalling his time “traveling with Bob” – Hope, that is, and making himself at home in Ft. Thomas.
For inductee Elizabeth Blackburn-Huff, it was a time to look over her shoulder at her Ludlow records that her four daughters are shooting for.
For Mike Setters, who helped Covington Catholic football get its start more than a half-century ago, it was a time to say thanks to all the coaches who mattered so much in his life.
For Tammy Schlarman Freihofer, this was the time she could look back at an extremely difficult time and the loss of two special supports in her life – her father and her brother – and express what they meant for her.
For longtime Boone County athletic trainer Tom Burns, it was time to look back over some of the special people he’s gotten to work with over time — a time when the number of athletes he’s taken care of for more than three decades has exceeded 9,000.
“Worked with 9,000 athletes,” Burns said his McDonald’s-like “has served . . . ” sign outside his office would say, and “taped seven billion ankles.”
“I’m now working on second-generation kids,” the Reading native said of his times working with the late Owen Hauck, who was watching down over him, and Nell Fookes, who was here for the ceremony, “but I will not be there for the third generation.”
Quoting Burns quoting Lindsey Nelson on those classic Notre Dame Sunday football replays, “Due to the constraints of time, we’ll move along.”
For Schlarman, a middle school teacher and coach of her kids after a multi-sport starring career at Highlands and Northern Kentucky University, “My mom and family have been through a lot these last 14 months,” losing to cancer her brother John, a beloved Kentucky Wildcat football coach after playing there, in November, 2020, and then her father, Bill, who was always there for her, in July, 2021.
“Never give up, work through adversity . . . , hard work pays off,” she preached what has been the Schlarman Family mantra playing backyard basketball on the court her father built for them. And have fun doing it. As she finished up, Schlarman teared up at the thought that “this was the first time her dad wasn’t here for her.” But he’d be looking down on her and smiling, she was certain.
For Setters, a West Covington kid set on being the next big basketball star at CovCath, Hep Cronin had another path in mind for him — football. And even though his only memory of those early days in football, like trying to figure out how to put his pads on, was the first-game counter play when he went for the fake and took out his own linebacker heading the wrong direction.
“What are you doing?” the linebacker asked him. “I have no idea,” was Mike’s honest answer. But he picked up quickly. The three-sport star (also baseball and track) wasn’t thrown out a single time stealing in high school, picking off 21 interceptions while earning a scholarship to Eastern Kentucky.
“I was made for that sport,” Mike said, “I could track anybody down.” Then it was off to 20 years of softball playing for the legendary Dixie Novelty/Main Tavern teams. Mike talked about how hard it was going to be for him to line up at shortstop next to former CovCath Coach Dan Tieman playing third. “When you’re a coach, you deserve the honor of being called ‘Coach.’ ” He would need Dan’s permission before he could call him that, Mike said, which he received.
Blackburn-Huff, with a host of daughters coming after her records in the shot put, soccer and basketball, knows they’re probably going to catch her. But she saluted the people who have made sports so special for anyone growing up in Ludlow — Jack Aynes, Benny Clary and Terry Keller.
And acknowledged the fact that she had five different members of the Jay Brewer Family coaching her. Or that how once Benny Clary was at her games cheering for her and now is at her daughters’ games.
Murgatroyd came to Cincinnati and WLWT from Ohio State where he got his start as a student in TV’s early days doing Woody Hayes football games and Jerry Lucas basketball games. He ended up on this side of the river where he eventually became judge-executive in Kenton County after a career producing and directing the TV shows of Ruth Lyons, Paul Dixon and Ludlow’s own Bob Braun.
But his work with the Reds and especially Bob Hope, who spent so much time in Cincinnati with his friend Ted Gregory raising money for the Hope House and then later touring with Hope, had the crowd’s attention. In all, Murgatroyd met six presidents, one he talked to without knowing it when Hope gave him Gerald Ford’s direct private line to set up a golf game.
Murgatroyd also started the Radio-TV program at NKU in his 15 years teaching there but said “the highlight of my life was being part of the St. Thomas family and the Bender and Shields’ families.”
Which is pretty much where we came in here for the monthly meeting of the Northern Kentucky sports family. Another highlight family get-together.
-Dan Weber