Dixie Heights High School is located at 3010 Dixie Highway in Edgewood but has a Fort Mitchell mailing address.
There’s much less confusion about which team dominates the girls 34th District. The Colonels have won the last 11 titles, and the Colonels are 50-0 within the district dating back to the 2016-17 season.
Dixie Heights (21-9 in 2024-25)
Colonels coach Joel Steczynski has a simple philosophy about winning 11 straight district titles.
“Don’t worry about the next one,” he said.
Winning title No. 12 could be the greatest challenge because senior forward Coralee Pelfrey is gone for the year with a torn anterior cruciate knee ligament.
“We will look very different,” Steczynski said. “We have five players returning from our entire roster of last year, so there’ll be a lot of new faces on the court this year.”
The obvious question: will not having Pelfrey change what the Colonels do on offense and defense? “Yes and yes,” Steczynski said.
Dixie’s five returnees are: Asia Carner, Aubrey Elkins, Peyton Gibson, Reese Ragan and Harper Allen.
With Pelfrey out, look for Carner and Elkins (who has committed to Belmont Abbey College, an NCAA Division II school in North Carolina) to pick up the scoring load. They averaged 5.2 and 11.1 points a game last year.
Steczynski said 5-foot, 11-inch junior forward Karma Tyler – who played on the junior varsity last season – is someonepeople should watch.
“Well, she is long, athletic,” Steczynski said. “ … Fortunately, Karma has shared the gym with Coralee for quite a while now, so she’s learned a lot of a lot of little nuances of rebounding in the game. Certainly you can’t replace Coralee in all the things that she did. But, you know, we’re doing our best to piece together.”
Steczynski said offensive and defensive strategies are fluid.
“Right now we have 11 players dressing varsity,” he said. “Of those 11, six of them were not on varsity last year. … How much our younger kids can get up to speed of the varsity game and how things play there will determine a lot of what we do.”
St. Henry (14-17 in 2024-25)
Dan Trame had forgotten what being a head coach was like – understandable because he finished an 18-year career in 2013, compiling a 308-204 coaching boys at St. Henry, Simon Kenton, Holy Cross and Walton-Verona.
“One thing I learned was, just realizing again, what a humongous job it is, and everything that goes with the duties of being a head coach,” Trame said.
Last season was Trame’s first as a girls head coach. (He was a girls assistant at Walton-Verona and St. Henry.) The Crusaders started 5-9 and finished 9-8.
“Well, we were very young, and I was playing a lot of girls – 10, 11 girls, every night, five of which were freshmen, a couple of which were sophomores,” Trame said.
This season’s Crusaders are not an imposing squad; sophomore Caroline Brannen is the tallest at 6 feet. Junior Joey Powers’ 12.2 points a game leads the team, and sophomore Kenadi Sieg averaged 3.6 rebounds.
Ask Trame about breakout players, however, and he immediately mentions senior Ellise Armbruster.
“She’s a forward, left-handed, tremendous leader, been through two knee surgeries,” Trame said. “She went down last year. It was just heartbreaking to see, but she came back and finished the year, and she’s just one of my favorite-type players because she does the stuff that a lot of people don’t see – the dirty work, whether it’s defending or taking a charge or getting a big rebound or making a big basket, and her leadership is top level.”
Twenty years ago, Trame would have defined a successful season in terms of victories, district and regional titles. Now, not so much.
“I’m older now, and I don’t know if I’m wiser or not, but I’ve been around a little longer,” Trame said. “A successful season is our team playing to its potential and our individual girls playing and their potential and just being the best team we we can be.”
Lloyd Memorial (9-16 in 2024-25)
When Juggernauts head coach Paul Sturgeon talks offense and defense, he often compares his philosophies to former NBA and college coaches.
Ask Sturgeon to describe offense, he might channel the late Paul Westphal for his free-flowing uptempo game he used with the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. There is a difference: a little more structure with the creativity – something he can do because he has “a lot of players.”
“We want to go up and down the floor, but we can play in a half-court if we need to,” Sturgeon said. “ … We could probably go about 10 deep but not suffer any letdown coming off the bench. So that’s one thing that we haven’t had here in the past.”
Producing some more scoring seems an imperative – Lloyd averaged just 42.6 points a game last season – and the Juggernauts will have to find offense from somewhere else because Mya Bennett, last year’s leading scorer, graduated and is now a freshman at Spalding University in Louisville.
Whatever Lloyd does, chances are it will involve senior center Mya Holden-Hopkins, who averaged 7.1 points and 7.6 rebounds a game last season.
“She’s a real good center in the middle,” Sturgeon said. “She could she could be a double-double every night.
Lloyd’s defense was frequently stingy – the Juggernauts allowed 49.4 points a game. In five of the nine wins, opponents scored under 40 points. Sturgeon mentions Connecticut men’s legend Jim Calhoun’s full-court zone press.
“If we press, it’ll be a 2-2-1, but we can up that where – kind of a Jim Calhoun-style, where you have two types of 2-2-1s,” Sturgeon said. “We can do it where we’re looking to trap mid-court, where we’re looking to take away the first inbound pass and then trapping all over from there.”
Sturgeon said juniors Emarie Litton and Brooklyn Jackson are likewise players folks should watch.
“Brooklyn Jackson is a junior that could play, you know, all five positions for us and had a really good summer and has been probably the best player in the gym,” Sturgeon said. “And Emarie Litton has improved her outside jump shot.”
Ludlow (11-19 in 2024-25)
It’ll be easy to spot first-year coach Justin Wade, and not just because he’s 6-4.
“I’m not going to sit down much,” Wade said.
Wade, a 1998 Holmes alumnus, spent the last 19 years coaching AAU boys and girls basketball teams. He was Ludlow’s middle school boys coach last year.
Something bothered Wade: The Panthers have had three girls coaches since 2021, and he wanted to bring stability. “I thought that was a pretty terrible thing for these young people to go through,” he said.
After much prayer, Wade decided to apply to coach the girls.
“I got an interview, and there you go,” he said. “They called me back and told me, ‘Hey, we picked you.’ So here I am.”
Wade says he’s an “aggressive” coach – understandable because he was an offensive lineman at Holmes.
“I focus on confidence, girls building confidence and toughness” he said. “We approach the game aggressively, but also respect the game.”
Ludlow’s opponents learned to respect seniors Addy Garrett and Kiley Huff. Garrett, last year’s Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference Division III Player of the Year, averaged 18.2 points and 5.5 rebounds, and Huff chipped in another 7.8 points and team-high 8.6.
Ludlow is a tall team – Kiley Huff is a 6-footer, and younger sister Ashtyn is taller.
“(Garrett) plays downhill, and she can score with the best of them; I mean, she’s a scorer” Wade said. “Kylie’s the most positive player you’ll probably ever be around. She’s smiling all the time.”
Villa Madonna (11-19 in 2024-25)
Second-year coach (and longtime Vikings softball boss) Tony Fields said there’s a rumor going around Villa’s campus at 2500 Amsterdam Road in Villa Hills.
“The running joke is now, though, that with me coaching both sports, I make everybody play both,” Fields said. “It’s not quite true, but my JV bench is entirely softball players who have never played (basketball) before.”
What is more, 12 of the 16 varsity Vikings also play softball.
“It worked out well with me coaching both because now I’ve got a good mix,” Fields said. “And then they can see how we do stuff on both ways, because the sports (are) different, but how we run the programs are the same.”
Junior Addison Nine leads the Vikings returning with 9.4 points a game, and sophomore Mary Chadwick is next at 6.2. Fields said senior Dahila Gorman will surprise people despite averaging just 4.1 points last year.
“I will be shocked if (Gorman) doesn’t quadruple that, if she doesn’t get in the 15 range,” Fields said.
Fields also expects big things from junior All-Region soccer player Emma Tupman and freshman Kerrigan Stapleton.
“Stapleton has been a huge plus for us,” Fields said. “She’s improved leaps and bounds in less than a year in the program.”
It’s been a long time – 2010 and 2011 – since Villa Madonna has advanced to the Ninth Region tournament, 11 years since the Vikings won a district tournament game, and nine years since an 18-13 record in 2016. Fields said being one of Northern Kentucky’s smallest schools (an estimated 486 students in grades kindergarten to 12 according to privateschoolreview.com) doesn’t mean the goals change.
“Our goals every year are to win district, get to the regional tournament – and then see what happens,” Fields said. “We’re not going to shy from that, even if we’re playing David versus Goliath.”