Sports notes piled up from a few days to a few months:
In making the announcement about the selection of Mikie Benton as head Russellville football coach Friday (http://theloganjournal.com/Stories.aspx?Article=sports1053), Athletic Director Kyle Yates noted that Benton is the third new head coach who is an RHS alumnus, joining Ryan Davenport in softball and Tyler Meacham in baseball.
Veteran coaches Dennis Sydnor (boys track), Debbie Elliott (volleyball) and the combination of Kim Morris-Sanntiago & Beverly York (cheer) are also RHS grads while Meacham doubles as the boys golf coach and Benton as girls track coach. Russellville doesn’t currently field girls teams in soccer or golf, but if they do, grads Jonathan White and Nathan Thompson would likely return as coaches.
Meanwhile LCHS also has a bevy of alumni as head coaches. They are Finley Baird and Lonnie Mason in basketball, Steven Lyne volleyball, Ethan Meguiar baseball, Joe Dan Laster cross country, Tina Baker Lynch archery, and a guy in football named Todd Adler, the state coach of the year.
The LoJo
Logan County has suffered through some long droughts against Russellville in boys basketball and in football, just as the Lady Panthers have against the Lady Cougars in volleyball and basketball.
This is a rare year, however. Logan is 10-0 against RHS varsity teams in “revenue sports.” The Cougars are 3-0 against the Panthers in soccer, 2-0 in basketball, and 1-0 in football. The Lady Cougars are 2-0 against their crosstown rivals in both volleyball and basketball.
The LoJo
In the fall, I neglected to report on the signing of Lady Cougar volleyball standout Shelby Hardison. She is headed to Brescia University where she will join another former Lady Cougar Kailee Moore as a Lady Bearcat.
Moore played in 45 games as a freshman for Brescia, which finished 22-14 overall and 13-4 in the River States Conference last fall.
Hardison has heard about Brescia all her life, I’m sure, since her dad, Chad Hardison, played basketball for the Owensboro college for four years after his graduation from LCHS in 1990.
The LoJo
Brea Croslin is getting ready for her sixth season as a varsity softball starter, and still she is just a sophomore.
Still she has one huge distraction off her mind, since she has already made her commitment for her college choice. She plans to play in the Big Ten for the University of Illinois. She was the Illini’s number one recruiting target in the Class of 2020.
Her mom, former Russellville Lady Panther head basketball coach Dedra Adler, says the talented shortstop’s five visits were to Louisville, Western, Kentucky and Missouri along with Illinois.
Nothing is binding yet, since she can’t officially sign until her senior year, but both Brea and the Fighting Illini are pleased with their upcoming relationship.
The LoJo
Croslin’s giving up basketball when she entered high school to concentrate on softball certainly seems to have worked out for her.
A mirror image of that is going on at LCHS in which Sarah Beth Hale opted not to play softball last spring to concentrate on basketball.
She had played varsity roundball the previous two seasons but her time and role on the team had been limited. Then her summer travel ball coach converted her from point guard to shooting guard, and she worked on her shot for months.
Now she often leads the Lady Cougars in scoring, highlighted by a game last week when she hit seven 3-pointers, including five in one quarter.
The greatest example of this at LCHS came when three-sport standout Mark Thompson gave up basketball his senior year in 1989 to concentrate on baseball. He was rewarded with a scholarship to UK, a number two draft pick, and a major league baseball career.
Doing this is still hard on players, their parents and the coaches of the sports they leave behind. I’m guessing the 1989 Cougars would have won five or six more games had Mark played basketball. The current Lady Cougar basketball team relies on a number of young players, but they would have been better and deeper with Brea. The same thing is true of the softball team without Sarah Beth.
I remember the pain I felt when our son, Trey Turner, had to give up high school baseball when he was chosen for the Kentucky Nike HoopStars the spring of his sophomore year and traveled to many states playing the Nike AAU circuit. I had watched him play baseball well for 13 seasons, and it was really hard for me to enjoy the sport without him for a while. He repeated as a Kentucky HoopStar as a junior, so baseball was a thing of the past.
All of us have to make difficult choices, not just as young athletes but throughout our lives.
The LoJo
After having gone to the top of one sport, Logan County High School graduate Dr. Daniel Roberts is moving on to another.
Ever since he graduated from East Tennessee State University with a degree in physical therapy, Roberts has worked in the Houston Astros organization. He did his time in the minors just like the on-field professionals, but in recent years he has traveled with the Major League team.
That all came to a happy ending this fall when he was on the field as soon as the Astros won the World Series.
Now Daniel has moved to the NBA as part of the Memphis Grizzlies training staff.
It’s much close to home, but it may be a while before Memphis plays for the biggest prize in that sport. Still, for three or four decades we never dreamed the Astros would win the World Series.
The LoJo
A couple of iconic local sports heroes have died in January.
Alan Neal was the first Little Leaguer I ever saw sign autographs. He was an outstanding baseball player from Little League through high school.
He is known more on a widespread basis, though, in football as a member of Russellville’s first two state finalist teams in 1964 and ’66. He was the starting split end and the punter for Coach Stumpy Baker’s 1966 state runner-up squad.
His contributions to sports and recreation in the city of Auburn were enormous. As a member of Auburn City Council, he played a big role in the development of the baseball complex at McCutchen-Coke Park. He is credited with starting teeball in Auburn, and he served as president of Auburn Youth Sports.
His sons knew success in sports, Brandon Neal in golf and Jeff Neal in baseball, and his daughter, Beth Neal Davis, was a Cougar cheerleader. Beth’s daughter, Madison Davis, has been the starting pitcher for Franklin-Simpson softball since she was in middle school. She’s currently a junior.
Tyrone Kennedy was already a dirt court basketball legend while he was still in high school. In fact, he was then known as ‘Ice’ or ‘Iceman’ because of his coolness on the court, a nickname he kept until his untimely death Jan. 8.
Ice didn’t play much organized basketball before he became eligible at Auburn his senior year and was a big contributor in Coach Barry Reed’s team reaching the regional finals in 1982. In fact, he was a part of the last game ever played by a Logan County School prior to consolidation, along with future Cougars Fred Tisdale, Tim Viers, Anthony Tisdale and Chuck Allison.
Tyrone and his wife, the former Catherine Higgins, are the parents of a household of offspring who have been outstanding athletes for RHS, including sons Josh and Jordan Kennedy, who are now respected law enforcement officers in Russellville and Logan County,
Ice was a key figure in the formation and a mainstay in the success of the Givin’ Back organization headed by Jae Allison, which has done so much to enrich the lives of young people in Russellville.