The Highlands High School softball team is on history’s doorstep, a perfectly appropriate place for a program drenched in history.
“We cannot wait to get the season started,” Bluebirds standout Bailey Markus said. “All the girls are really excited to get it going.”
Highlands, the two-time defending 9th Region champion, begins its bid for a rare regional three-peat Monday with a season-opening game against Oldham County. The home opener is 5 p.m. Tuesday against Conner. The schedule picks up in earnest March 23 with 13 scheduled games in 17 days for the Bluebirds.
Coach Milt Horner is in his sixth year at the helm. But he’s been around the program long enough to know Ryle was the last team to win three straight 9th Region championships in 2012. A high school softball team from Campbell County has never won three 9th Region titles in a row. Highlands is the first from the county to win two straight.
“We have a great coach with a lot of experience,” said senior Michelle Barth. “We always seem to have quite a few underclassmen. It just goes to show he wants to prepare girls the right way. I think that’s one reason why we’ve been so successful with our young girls. They are prepared.”
The Bluebirds won last year’s regional title with two seniors. They won the year before with three. This year, they are attempting a three-peat in the 9th Region with two seniors, Markus and Barth. Markus has committed to play softball at Muskingum University. Barth has committed to Thomas More University.
The Bluebirds have two juniors, Julia Luhn and Kara Wartman, which means they’ll very likely have just two seniors again next season.
It’s not easy winning at a championship clip without the ballast a bevy of senior leaders can provide. But coach Horner has been working with young aspirational softball players for nearly 30 years. He remembers the day when the notion of competitive fastpitch softball at Highlands first entered his mind. The idea came to him in 1996, years before Highlands had a fastpitch team and well before he became head coach.
“Jessica, my oldest daughter, saw fastpitch softball on TV at the Olympics in Atlanta,” said Horner. “She said, ‘Can I play that?’ And I thought about it.”
In the late 1990s, Highlands was playing slowpitch softball just like most everybody else in Northern Kentucky. Eventually, Jessica Horner became a high school student at Highlands, and in 1999 coach Horner successfully petitioned the Highlands school board to change the varsity format to fastpitch, which eventually became the KHSAA’s sanctioned style of play.
“In 2000, we had a slowpitch varsity team,” said coach Horner, a Highlands graduate who played baseball, basketball and football for the Bluebirds. “But, we had a fastpitch junior varsity.”
That changed the next year.
“When we started fastpitch at the varsity level in 2001, Jessica was the pitcher, but I wasn’t the head coach,” said Horner, who was still in the midst of a 37-year career at IBM before retiring in 2013. “Jessica played on our first three fastpitch teams. Brian Walz was the first coach.”
Coach Horner continued to have a hand in Highlands softball including as an assistant during what has been a 25-year association. He has almost all the team’s score books to prove it as he ramps up work on a side project that will eventually result in a Highlands softball record book.
Jessica got married to a Highlands graduate and in 2008 returned as the Bluebirds’ head coach, replacing Kevin Nieporte, another key architect of early Highlands softball. Jessica was coach for five years, assisted by husband Jake Donelan, and won a pair of 36th District championships. In her maiden season, she guided the Bluebirds to the 9th Region tournament semifinals the first year it was an eight-team event.
The Donelans retired from softball coaching the spring of 2012 and welcomed their first child the following December. Jessica was replaced by Rob Coffey and the program took off, reaching unprecedented heights during his six-plus seasons with a 9th Region title in 2014, a runner-up finish in 2015, another 9th Region crown in 2016 and another runner-up finish in 2018.
Milt Horner stepped in during the 2019 season and Highlands has rarely missed a beat despite the pandemic wiping out the entire 2020 season. Since then, Horner has continued the district dominance his daughter and coach Coffey established then upped the bar with back-to-back 9th Region crowns the past two years.
What’s more, coach Horner has achieved this sustained level of success primarily with young players while dealing with a shortage of seniors since he took over the program. This year’s seniors, Markus and Barth, know they represent the norm of late, not the exception. The exception doesn’t come until 2026 when the Bluebirds expect to have five seniors.
Markus, the leadoff hitter and centerfielder, and Barth, the cleanup-hitting catcher, are two of four Highlands captains in a group also including sophomores Kaitlyn Dixon and Payton Brown. When the 9th Region softball coaches voted Highlands No. 1 in a recent preseason poll, they also put those four Bluebirds on their list of the region’s top 10 players, giving Highlands a preponderance of the area’s top talent. Markus is ranked third. Dixon is ranked seventh. Barth is eighth and Brown is ranked tied for 10th.
Markus is an on-base machine. Last season, she led the team in hits (54), batting average (.446) and was second in walks (18) for a team-leading on-base percentage of .517. She also led the team in runs (47) and was a team-best 20-for-20 on stolen base attempts. Barth was second on the team in RBI (47), tied for second in doubles (12) and fourth in batting average (.418). She also hit two home runs.
Brown led the team in doubles, triples and RBI and was third in home runs and batting average (.429). Dixon, who was fourth in RBI, sixth in hits and seventh in batting average, is the No. 1 pitcher after leading the team with a 12-3 record, 0.98 ERA and 157 strikeouts in 122 innings pitched.
Most of the rest of the key returning players including sophomores Cam Markus and Morgan Pompilio, freshman Allison Meyers and eighth grader Layla Zepf are young but experienced.
They all helped the Bluebirds to a 27-9 record last season while keeping a stranglehold on the 9th Region and the 36th District. Highlands put together an unblemished 16-0 record last season against regional opponents and has won 21 straight games against the region. The Bluebirds finished 15-1 against the region in 2022.
“The target’s on our backs. We know that,” coach Horner said. “It’s one thing to get to the top but it’s another thing to stay on top. Having seven returning starters helps. I feel very fortunate to have every girl I have.”
Highlands has won 29 consecutive games against district foes going back to the last loss May 26, 2017, against Newport Central Catholic in the 36th District final. The Bluebirds are 41-1 against the district since the beginning of the 2016 season and 59-3 since the beginning of 2013. Coach Horner is 23-0 in district play since he took over the program and sports an 85-37-1 career record which puts him within range of Coffey’s program-record 137 wins. Highlands has averaged 27 wins per season over the last three years.
Jessica Donelan won 68 games at Highlands. Kevin Nieporte won 75. The fastpitch program is bearing down on 400 wins all-time with 372 entering its 23rd season, thanks to the talents of so many people over all those years.
“It’s been great to be at Highlands,” Barth said. “I love our chances this year. Our team, for as young as we are, we’re experienced. And these girls act like they’ve been here before.”