NKyTribune
Northern Kentucky's Newspaper
By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Five hot teams. One really cold Friday night coming up.
It’s the penultimate week for high school football with the goal of getting to UK’s Kroger Field championship games the next weekend in four separate classes.
CLASS 5A: One team will make it for certain. In Class 5A, it will either be a 13-0 Cooper team, top-ranked in the KHSAA’s RPI ratings, or challenger Highlands (11-2) – a team that came close to Cooper in a 24-21 regular season matchup in the game everyone knew would send off football in Northern Kentucky in a big way. As it did last year.
Whatever happened in the regular season with air-minded Cooper against a pound-it-on-the-ground Highlands team with 23 state titles – second-most in Kentucky history — wouldn’t be the final word, we knew. Just as it wasn’t a year ago when Highlands won the regular season game only to have Cooper win the playoff matchup and advance to the state championship game.
How will the weather impact this one? Now that Highlands has become much more aerial-minded with the Bluebirds’ Rio Litmer joining Cooper’s Cam O’Hara for a pair of big-time throwing threats, it could really be a factor neither has had to contend with if the temperature drops down to 20 or so Friday night.
We asked if there was a possibility to play this game – and the others on Friday’s schedule — during the day when it might be 35 degrees with no school and so many folks not having to work but it looks like you’d better button up, it’s going to be frigid. And it’s going to be at night.
But the Cooper-Highlands game is just one half of the doubleheader Friday in Union, the onetime little Boone County town that has become the center of high school football in the Commonwealth.
CLASS 6A: The top-seeded RPI team left in Class 6A – and No. 2 overall – in a class where Louisville schools have dominated and Lexington schools have challenged, this just may be Northern Kentucky’s turn to win its first-ever largest school title with the Raiders a big favorite to advance to Kroger Field next Saturday where you could have a pair of teams from Union in back-to-back state championship games Dec. 6 at Kroger Field.
The positive vibes for the Ryle game are that it’s a district rematch against Georgetown’s Great Crossing, a game won by Ryle, 36-8, when these two played six weeks ago at Ryle, where Friday’s game will be played.
CLASS 4A: This was the game no one – well, no one outside Park Hills and maybe not many there – thought would happen. But last Friday, on the road in Danville, Covington Catholic’s Colonels upset nationally 17th-ranked Boyle County, 31-28, thanks to the miraculous running of junior quarterback Chase Harney, whose 234 rushing yards were the difference in a game where CovCath beat the team that ended their unbeaten season, 41-0, in the 2023 state championship game. With Carney becoming the first CovCath player to reach the 1000-yard mark in both rushing and passing, CovCath outgained Boyle, 423 yards to 290.
Now the 11-2 Colonels have to do it all over again, in Frankfort this Friday, against another unbeaten team. Franklin County (12-0) doesn’t have many eye-popping wins but did beat Lexington Christian, 39-33, in Week 2. Should be interesting. No team in Northern Kentucky has come as far, improved as much as the Colonels who have won their last 11 straight games after opening 0-2.
CLASS 2A: Another greatly improved team is 12-1 Beechwood, after reeling off eight straight after the Tigers’ loss to CovCath in Week 4. The speedy Tigers are on tear, outscoring opponents, 574-42 in those games – an average margin of 52.4-8.4 – with five shoutouts. But a talented Lexington Christian team Beechwood edged for a state title in 2007, is not one of those teams.
The Eagles play a top schedule, having beaten Louisville Christian, Lexington Catholic and Raceland after opening with a loss to Boyle County, the Eagles clobbered Mayfield, 47-7, last week at Mayfield. How they handle Beechwood’s trio of fast wide receivers – Tyler Fryman, Luke Erdman and James Cusick – could be the key to this one at Edgar McNabb Field in Ft. Mitchell.
CLASS 1A: We’d be remiss here if we ignored what the two Newport teams did in re-establishing Northern Kentucky in Class 1A, where the four original programs here – Dayton, Ludlow, Bellevue and Beechwood – combined for 25 state titles over the years. Newport Central Catholic (9-4), winners of two Class 1A titles, traveled to third-ranked Campbellsville last Friday and could have, maybe should have won in a game of inches and seconds, losing 27-21 with 12 seconds left after a tipped ball at the goal line. Newcomer Newport (9-3), meanwhile, outgained top-ranked Kentucky Country Day by 143 yards only to fall on the road, 14-12, despite big games from Kyle Lee, Rodzion Thompson and Keegan Farrell.
Friday’s high school football semifinal games
CLASS 2A
Lexington Christian (11-2) at Beechwood (12-1), 7 p.m.
Somerset (9-4) at Owensboro Catholic (13-0), 7 p.m.
CLASS 4A
Covington Catholic (11-2) at Franklin County (12-0), 7 p.m.
Corbin (12-1) at Paducah Tilghman (13-0), 7 p.m.
CLASS 5A
Highlands (11-2) at Cooper (13-0), 7 p.m.
Bowling Green (11-2) at South Warren (12-1), 7 p.m.
CLASS 6A
Great Crossing (10-3) at Ryle (11-2), 7 p.m.
Frederick Douglass (9-4) at Louisville Trinity (11-2), 7 p.m.
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