By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter

With the beginning of fall sports competition one week away, several Northern Kentucky teams are hoping to repeat the successful seasons they had last year when two of them won state championship trophies.

Last December, Covington Catholic’s football team completed a perfect 15-0 season with a 14-7 win over Frederick Douglass in the Class 5A state championship game. The Colonels lost a lot of talented seniors to graduation, but they have veteran quarterback Caleb Jacob returning.

Maddie Strong

The Scott girls cross country team repeated as Class 2A state champion last October with two eighth-graders, one freshman, one sophomore and one junior in the winning lineup. The team-leader was eighth-grader Maddie Strong, who had the fastest time (19:38.53) of any local runner in any class at the state meet..

Brossart placed second in the girls Class 1A state cross country meet and Highlands was state runner-up in girls soccer last fall.

Brossart has lead runner Amy Klocke back to lead the pack. The list of returning soccer players for Highlands includes Chloe Bramble and Faith Broering, who were two of the team’s top three scorers last season.

Notre Dame’s volleyball team made it to the semifinals of the 2019 state tournament before getting knocked off by eventual state champion Louisville Assumption. The Pandas hope to make a another run at the state title with five Division I college recruits on this year’s roster.

The starting date for high school fall sports competition, except golf, was pushed back to the week of Sept. 7 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The opening games for football are set for Friday, Sept. 11.

The limits placed on each sport for the regular season are 14 games for soccer, 24 matches for volleyball, nine games for football and nine meets for cross country.

CovCath preparing athletic eligibility forms for transfer students

While high school athletic departments around the state have been dealing with protocols put into place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Covington Catholic has also been busy filling out athletic eligibility forms for transfer students.

The Colonels could add 6-foot-8 senior Skyler Schmidt and 6-foot-7 junior Mitchell Rylee to the varsity basketball roster if their eligibility applications are approved by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association.

Skyler Schmidt

Last season, Schmidt averaged 24 points and 16 rebounds per game for Clermont Northeastern High School in Ohio. He was named Player of the Year in the Southern Buckeye Conference.

According to posts on Twitter, Rylee has transferred to CovCath from Beechwood. He averaged 8.4 points and 6.9 rebounds last season in his second year of varsity competition.

The KHSAA bylaw regarding transfers says any student who participated in any varsity contest in any sport while in grades 9-12 and then transfers schools will be ineligible for interscholastic athletics at the varsity level for one year from the date of their last participation.

The nine-page forms CovCath will submit request a waiver of that bylaw based on one of 11 exemptions. The most common exemption is a bona fide change of address by the student’s entire family unit outside their previous school district.

Last year, CovCath had two transfer students use the change of address exemption to become immediately eligible for varsity basketball. It’s not known whether the new transfer students are applying for the same waiver.

CovCath athletic director Tony Bacigalupo said he didn’t want to go on record with anything regarding the transfer students.

“The diocese has asked, because of COVID, that all media communications goes through them at this time,” Bacigalupo said.

All “A” Classic plans to offer five state tournaments in fall sports

The Kentucky All “A” Classic has scheduled state tournaments in golf, soccer and volleyball for small schools around the state after making some revisions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Golf is the only fall sport that didn’t have its season sidetracked by the pandemic, but some All “A” Classic regional playoffs in soccer and volleyball had to be rescheduled.

The state golf tournaments will still be played Sept. 12 for boys and Sept. 13 for girls at two courses in Richmond. Each field will include members of 16 regional champion teams and individual state qualifiers.

Brossart won the 10th Region All “A” Classic tournaments in both boys and girls golf to qualify for the small-school state tournaments. The 9th Region champions were St. Henry boys and Villa Madonna girls. Walton-Verona took the 8th Region boys title.

The state soccer tournaments will be Sept. 26-27, but the boys and girls games will be played at separate sites. Each bracket will consist of eight teams that made it through regional and sectional playoffs.

Sectional playoffs were added to the All “A” Classic volleyball playoffs this year to limit the state tournament bracket to eight teams. The state tournament will be played Oct. 10 at Eastern Kentucky University.