Brach Rice wore a shirt after this week that had a symbol for Angelman Syndrome and even has a tattoo of the it on his left arm in honor of his 23-year-old brother Seth.
The Mayo Clinic describes Angelman Syndrome as “a genetic disorder. It causes delayed development, problems with speech and balance, intellectual disability, and, sometimes, seizures.” But on the positive side, the Mayo Clinic says people that have it “often smile and laugh frequently, and have happy, excitable personalities.”
“He’s non-verbal. He has balance issues,” Rice said of Seth. “He’s my spark plug. When I see him up there cheering, that just gets me going, fires me up a bit more. I play because he can’t.”
The 6-foot-3-inch, 230-pound Rice has been playing three sports for the Dixie Heights Colonels and plans to do it as a senior. Rice burst onto the scene in football and baseball as a sophomore. Rice had a bigger role on the Dixie Heights boys basketball team as a junior after seeing limited time as a sophomore when the Colonels drove to the 9th Region championship game.
“I feel like in sports, you have to establish the muscles in all different categories,” Rice said. “In basketball, there’s a lot of jumping, fighting for rebounds. Baseball is a lot of coordination swinging the bat and catching the ball. Football is a little bit of everything. It’s about that balance and movement.”
The 18-year-old recently verbally committed to play football on a full scholarship for the Miami (Ohio) RedHawks in the Mid-American Conference. He agreed it is a huge weight off his shoulders so he can focus on his senior year starting with football season in just more than a month.
“It’s going to help me out a lot,” Rice said. “I don’t have to worry about responding to all these different coaches sending them my film because really, I know who’s got my back at the end of the day. It’s Miami (Ohio). I’m pumped up to be there.”
Rice had offers from other schools including Bowling Green State University, the University of Toledo, Ohio University, Eastern Kentucky University and Southern Illinois University. But Rice liked the proximity of Miami only an hour to the northwest in Oxford, Ohio in addition to the other traditions that includes the Cradle of Coaches. Legendary college football coaches including Woody Hayes, Paul Brown, Bo Schembechler and Notre Dame’s Ara Parseghian have roots there.
“They were always following up on me – baseball season, basketball season,” Rice said. “I sent them clips of me getting rebounds, retweeting my stuff on Twitter. I just feel like they wanted me the most. That was where I fit in the best. My parents loved it. Even Seth was excited on the field clapping his hands. That’s when I knew this place was it for me.”
Rice hopes to help lead the Dixie Heights football team back to a respectable level coming off a 3-8 season in Pat Burke’s first season as head coach. The Colonels did not return much varsity experience from the 2021 team that finished 7-5 and lost 36-7 to Ryle in the second round of the Class 6A playoffs.
“My model when I was young was effort, energy and attitude,” Rice said. “If you have that, there’s not much that can beat you.”
Rice has displayed a lot of versatility on the football playing a lot of tight end and linebacker. Rice caught 16 passes for 271 yards and three touchdowns as a sophomore and had two carries for 51 yards and a touchdown. Defensively, Rice had 29 tackles including 19 solo and four sacks.
Then as a junior, Rice had 92 carries for 605 yards and nine touchdown with just one catch for 57 yards. Then on defense, Rice led the Colonels with 126 tackles including 73 solo with 12 tackles for a loss including five sacks.
“All my life I’ve played a bunch of positions. I’ve played center all the way up to quarterback,” Rice said. “Last year, we were real young, had a few missing spots. But this year, I feel we’re coming in a little different as the underdog. It’s going to be real exciting.”
Rice stepped in to play quarterback last year with an injury to junior Armani Gregg completing 22-of-39 passes for 369 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. Rice ran for 112 yards and three touchdowns in the regular season finale 55-13 win at county rival Scott and completed 5-of-10 passes for 121 yards and two touchdowns. Burke said Rice will play middle linebacker, running back, halfback and tight end this year in addition to some time at wide receiver at some point.
“His work ethic, his demeanor, his attitude, his willingness to sacrifice his self, his body, his time is exactly what we’re looking for here at Dixie Heights High School,” Burke said. “We’re going to utilize his tools because I think he’s one of the best players in northern Kentucky and the Greater Cincinnati Area to be honest.”
Rice averaged 5.9 points and 4.1 rebounds last year in basketball season in Chad Fields’ first year as head coach. Rice was one of the tallest players on the team that finished 7-18 and missed the 9th Region Tournament for the first time since 2000.
“Every team has that up-and-down bumpy road,” Rice said. “We really were undersized. I played the big man. When we play with energy, I feel we could have gone out there and competed with anybody. But it sometimes got the best of us. There were probably more teams out there with more talent than us.”
Dixie Heights came into the season with one returning starter in Hudson Blank after graduating eight seniors from the previous year. But the Colonels return their two leading scorers in Blank, junior Griffin Derry along with Rice and others. Fields said you can’t skip steps in the process of building toward success. He said game experience will help Rice improve on the court.
“Brach is the fiercest competitor and it is maybe the most prized trait that you need to win these days in your program,” Fields said. “He is a super supportive teammate. He understands when he needs to shoulder more responsibility or he needs to shoulder more support for his teammates. It takes mental maturity to kind of know the difference and he can do that. But of all those things, Brach is a wonderful athlete. But he’s an ever better person. He can take his pick of whichever scholarship he wanted to accept. We’re just super delighted to have him a part of everything Dixie.”
One highlight the Colonels had on the court last year is a 65-64 double overtime win at Cooper on Feb. 14. The Jaguars won the 33rd District and finished 9th Region runner-up coming one shot short of winning the region championship.
“We won a lot of the 50/50 balls that game,” Rice said. “There’s photos of us jumping up and down. I couldn’t play in that one with my sprained ankle. But it was pretty exciting.”
Then in baseball, Rice saw action in the 7-3 season-opening win at Ryle his sophomore year. Rice finished 6-0 with three saves striking out 37, walking just 12 and allowing 33 hits and 11 earned runs posting a 1.82 earned-run average helping the Colonels to a 24-9 record and a 34th District Tournament championship.
Rice admitted coming into his junior baseball season sluggish with the ankle injury. But Rice had a break-through on May 5 in the 4-3 win at home over Hazard. Rice pitched a complete game striking out six, walking two and allowing two walks, seven hits and two earned runs.
“About the third inning, he caught fire and you could see his emotion, desire to excel kind of increase,” said Chris Maxwell, Dixie Heights head baseball coach. “I just wasn’t getting out of him what we had gotten out of him the previous year as a sophomore. I made that comment after the Hazard game. I said, ‘I love the way you played with emotion that game.’ He said, ‘I play that way all the time.’ I said, ‘No, you don’t.’ Our catcher Ethan Bosley looked at him and said, ‘No. You don’t.’ I think he realized he hadn’t been. He accepted that. He got a few hits and it was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty fun.’ So I was happy with him.”
Rice finished the season 5-4 on the mound with a 3.13 ERA striking out 42, walking 17 and allowing 44 hits and 20 earned runs. But Rice had his first varsity hit this past season batting .321 (25-for-78) with six doubles, two home runs, one triple, 11 runs batted in, 16 runs scored and two stolen bases.
“Coach Maxwell pulled me aside and goes, ‘Look. You’re supposed to be our guy so we really need you to lock it in,” Rice said. “I was like, ‘I’m just going to forget about it and just pitch the ball, throw it over the plate and see what I can do.’ It worked out for me.”
Dixie Heights may have finished 15-22 overall. But the Colonels still won a third straight 34th District Tournament championship and advanced to the 9th Region semifinals for the first time since 2017 with an 8-5 win over Newport Central Catholic.
Rice started the semifinal game against eventual four-time region champion Beechwood and pitched into the seventh inning striking out six and walking three and allowed six hits. Dixie Heights led 2-0 going into the top of the seventh before the Tigers rallied for a 4-2 win.
“We had them on their heels. We knew we could have got them,” Rice said. “We came into that game all pumped up. This year, we know what to expect. Our good pitchers are returning and everything else.”
The Colonels open the football season Aug. 18 at the county rival Simon Kenton Pioneers at 7 p.m. Dixie Heights wants to show how far it improved after losing 66-23 at home to the Pioneers last year.
