The news was as bad as everyone had feared. Beechwood’s Mitchell Berger has a torn ACL and meniscus, suffered in Friday’s Lloyd game, and will undergo surgery in the next couple of weeks. And it’s not just his Beechwood teammates and coaches shedding tears for the end of his high school career.
Just plain fans – from Beechwood and everywhere else – and media folks like yours truly for whom there is supposed to be, as they admonish us, “no cheering in the press box.” Only that wasn’t possible when you were talking about Mitch.
Trying to think of the Northern Kentucky athletes who had the same kind of multi-sport impact that I’ve seen over the years. Bob Barton comes first. Out of Covington Holmes in 1959, the only thing that kept the sharp-shooting guard from playing for Adolph Rupp at Kentucky was an offer by the San Francisco Giants in baseball that led to his 10-year major league career as a catcher.
Covington Catholic’s three-sport star – all-state in two of them – Bill Topmiller led those early 1970 Colonel teams as a pass-catching end, a jump-shooting forward and a power-hitting outfielder who eventually helped Vanderbilt to a rare bowl appearance in football as a tight end.
Then along came Kentucky Mr. Football Frank Jacobs, like Topmiller, a three-sport star at Newport Central Catholic in the mid-1980s, who starred in football, basketball, and baseball before moving on to start at tight end for Notre Dame’s last national championship football team.
So that’s the unofficial company Berger was a part of as the state’s leading scorer in football at 20.2 points a game for the two-time defending state champion Tigers – a number that would have put him among the leaders in basketball even. The 205-pounder ran for 21 TDs, caught passes for two more, kicked a field goal and 19 extra points, even converted a safety for his 202 points while averaging 9.2 yards a carry, 140 yards a game, for a total of 1,119 yards. He also was the state’s top rugby-style punter on the run with the option to do just that making it beyond tough to defend the Tigers in punt formation.
In baseball, the all-stater was both an ace on the mound and a big-time power hitter in the middle of the lineup as a slick-fielding center fielder. His seven wins last spring and his six home runs put him among the state’s leaders in both categories.
He could do almost anything in football, on defense, too, as a shut-down linebacker, which made him uncomfortable, a bit, when we came to talk to him after a game. Because he knew you were going to ask him about something he’d just done — ask him to talk about himself. Which was not something he ever seemed comfortable doing.
But there was one thing he seemed really enthused about. That was when we asked him if there was anything he couldn’t do. And with a big smile, the strong-armed pitcher/center fielder said he “couldn’t throw a spiral” with a football no matter how hard he tried. And that seemed to give him a kick. There was actually something he couldn’t do. And that made him smile.
And now there’s something else he can’t do – play the rest of his senior year and high school career.
And for that, no one is smiling. We’re all going to miss how hard he played and how easy he made it look. And how much we enjoyed seeing someone do that.
Catch WCPO’s John Popovich Wednesday at NKSHOF in Park Hills
John Popovich, former sports director at WCPO TV/Channel 9, will be the guest speaker Wednesday for the induction of six new members into the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame. The Garden of Park Hills will host the inductions that are free and open to the public starting at 11:30 a.m. Popovich, renowned for his story-telling skills in his 33 years hosting his Sports of All Sorts Sunday show, was at WCPO for 40 years before retiring in 2019.
This month’s inductees include:
*** Bob Ward, a football and track star from Dixie Heights High School when the Colonels could play anyone – and did – with wins over Louisville Flaget, Highlands and Corbin in the Recreation Bowl. He also helped Dixie to its lone regional track title.
*** Jeff Wright, maybe the state’s top all-around trickster in 1973 when he won his second 180-yard low-hurdle title and finished second in the 120 high hurdles as he completed a career with eight regional titles and two state championships before going on to Brevard College and then coaching at Dixie Heights, Scott and Ludlow.
*** Charlie Walton, a three sport athlete at Dayton High School, the former football, basketball, and track athlete earned all-state honors his final two seasons as a middle linebacker before playing college football at Eastern Kentucky where he was a member of the 1966 Ohio Valley Conference championship team. He would go on to coach basketball for 10 years in the Covington and Boone County systems.
*** Randy Ogden, a football and track star at Dixie Heights, Ogden captained the football team and earned All-Conference honors as Dixie’s offensive and defensive back of the year. His mile relay team held the school record for 34 years.
*** Fred Ogden, an outdoorsman, he started the Latonia Gun Club and staged clinics for gun safety and The American Crow Hunters Association after World War II. A national champion in the National Crow Shoot (crows were considered destructive to corn crops) in 1958, Ogden’s 45 crows broke the then-record 27. He was later recruited by the Cincinnati Police Department to shoot pigeons on downtown buildings.
*** Dan Jenkins, the former Beechwood High School and University of Kentucky swimmer won the 1993 state championship in the 100-yard butterfly event.
TMU’s Dyllan Hasler wins weekly MSC award
Top finisher for the Thomas More women in three of their last four meets, Independence’s Dyllan Hasler was named the Mid-South Conference Women’s Cross Country Runner of the Week for the first time in her career this week. Hasler has been the top finisher for the Saints in three of their four meets and has recorded three Top-20 finishes and two top-five finishes with her best performance of the season Friday at the Jenna Strong Fall Classic where she cut 15.6 seconds off her previous race with a 19:06.9 time to finish second place. That is the fourth best 5K in program history.