I saw that excellent team! As I recall, they defeated T and X in succession (the X game was a thriller) to win the title. Whatever happened to the rb's on that team?

 

BTW, very good idea for a thread.

 

Those were some great games! I remember seeing Trinity come out take take up half the field during warm ups.

If I can remember in the early 90's those Boone County and Trinity matchups in the state finals were definitely good ones. I know one of the years Trinity beat my Rebels with a guy by the name of Shaun Alexander in the backfield.

That was 1994 in the Finals....in 88, 89, and 90 we beat Boone in classic matchups in the semi's.

If I can remember in the early 90's those Boone County and Trinity matchups in the state finals were definitely good ones. I know one of the years Trinity beat my Rebels with a guy by the name of Shaun Alexander in the backfield.

That was a memorable day, my birthday in fact. Shawn Johnson was a beast that day, he returned the opening kickoff 93 yards for a TD, then sealed the deal with a 57 yard scamper down the sideline on a run around the right side. Trinity's D shut down the juggernaut of Alexander, he only got 97 yards on 32 carries.

To be one of the 10 smallest schools to play football....Bellevue is loaded with state Tradition. In the NKY area Bellevue has the third most appearances in state. Only Highlands and Beechwood have more. Also Bellevue is tied with several other schools in 11th place for having the most state titles across the state. I think this is an impressive state coming from such a small school. GO TIGERS!!!!!

That was a memorable day, my birthday in fact. Shawn Johnson was a beast that day, he returned the opening kickoff 93 yards for a TD, then sealed the deal with a 57 yard scamper down the sideline on a run around the right side. Trinity's D shut down the juggernaut of Alexander, he only got 97 yards on 32 carries.

 

I will never forget that game. Shaun Alexander had been quoted in the CJ all week previous to the game that Boone County was going to beat Trinity for the title. On game day, Boone County's busses had parked right up against the U of L football building at Old Cardinal Stadium where the dressing rooms were. After the game, there was a crush of media waiting for interviews with young Shaun. All of the Boone County players (except Shaun) had come out and gotten on the bus and the media was still there. When Shaun came out he had a towel over his head and was flanked by 5 or 6 state troopers who escorted Shaun to the bus without his saying a word to the assembled reporters. It was later the next week when Shaun said maybe he shouldn't have spoken so freely the week before.

 

Glad to see that a Kentucky high-schooler turned into a first-class NFL player.

Good memory. X was stopped on the one yard line on the final play of the game, alsodriving for a tie. You can play a little football when you smack both of these Catholic powers on successive weekends. Trinity had a very good team that year, losing only once in regular season, the memorable 15-14 loss to Holy Cross. Clark County was deserving of the title that year.

 

Wasn't the Holy Cross loss that year the one that broke the 50-game win streak?

I played on that team. I think that was the first state championship in any sport for Ludlow.

 

I played on the Elkhorn City team that lost to Ludlow in the semi-finals that year. Mr. Loksak (sp) was special. Ludlow won on our field 27-6 and he scored all 27 points.

Wasn't the Holy Cross loss that year the one that broke the 50-game win streak?

Yes....our kicker had gotten hurt in practice that week (he was a backup running back), sophomore Matt Fleming took over the kicking duties....it didn't work out well for us.

Thanks rocks fans for clearing those games up and adding the details. I was pretty young then, so i don't remember much from those battles of Boone and Trinity.........Then you guys got Brohm and company and those battles to turned to blowouts :fight: haha.

I didn't attend Dayton but here's a link to an article about the 40th anniversary of the 1966 State champs, the Dayton Greendevils.

 

http://news.nky.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20060929/NEWS0103/609290426

I mean...this was one of the best runs in KY history...Clark County beat us then St. Xavier is back to back weeks.

 

 

GRC also beat Boone County in the round before they played Trinity. Beating all three (St. X, T, and Boone) was an incredible task. They also did it using the old wing-t offense. That was a very talented team under coach Don Danko.

That was 1994 in the Finals....in 88, 89, and 90 we beat Boone in classic matchups in the semi's.

 

Yes, not sure which one of those years it was but I remember going out to watch Jeff Brohm and I remember thinking, this is the best high school quarterback I have ever seen.

I will never forget that game. Shaun Alexander had been quoted in the CJ all week previous to the game that Boone County was going to beat Trinity for the title. On game day, Boone County's busses had parked right up against the U of L football building at Old Cardinal Stadium where the dressing rooms were. After the game, there was a crush of media waiting for interviews with young Shaun. All of the Boone County players (except Shaun) had come out and gotten on the bus and the media was still there. When Shaun came out he had a towel over his head and was flanked by 5 or 6 state troopers who escorted Shaun to the bus without his saying a word to the assembled reporters. It was later the next week when Shaun said maybe he shouldn't have spoken so freely the week before.

 

Glad to see that a Kentucky high-schooler turned into a first-class NFL player.

 

 

He sure is.... my 11 yr old son went in halves with me last night at Barnes and Noble and we bought the new Alexander Book that is out...Touchdown Alexander... He read the first two chapters and loves it. He is a class guy and also a great Fantasy football back....until the foot injury. Need you back Shaun. One of the first things he says in his book is that he still truly looks up to his older brother Duran who is 1 yr older than he is and never was an athlete but a very smart and funny guy.

Breathitt County 1995 and 1996

 

Now, of course, I'm just a little biased, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better story than Breathitt County's back-to-back state title runs. First, I'm pretty sure Breathitt County had never made it past round 2 of the playoffs, so needless to say, we'd never won anything major in football.

 

1995

 

It all started with the decision to start using the shotgun offense in 1995. I have to admit that I had my doubts about how good our team really was until around week 8 or 9 of the season when we played Whitesburg. The Yellowjackets were undefeated, so the game would decide the district champion. But, more importantly, this was a Whitesburg team that returned a large number from the previous year when they advanced to the state semi-finals before losing to Danville something like 48-14. I note the score, because after we beat them 41-6, I started thinking, "Well, we beat them as bad as Danville did last year. Maybe we can win state." Obviously, Danville was the measuring stick for anyone who wanted to win Class 2A, so I knew if we could compete with them, then we could beat anyone else.

 

We won our first three playoff games with relative ease, including an impressive victory over Erlanger Lloyd (33-13) on a cold rainy night in Northern KY. This set up the showdown with Danville for a trip to Louisville. It was cold. Really cold. Danville was 69-2 in their last 71 games going in to our matchup with them, and when I arrived the first thing I remember seeing was the big "Stadium Of Champions" with the years of their state championships painted across the top of the Ads stadium. And they have a few. I remember thinking we had arrived to be playing a team like that at a place like that for the right to play on the carpet. Danville held a 20-10 lead with about 9 minutes to go, when we returned a punt for a TD. Freshman Jonathan Chapman scored the go-ahead TD, and then we stopped Danville. While trying to run the clock out, we had a 4th and 1 around mid-field and we went for it. Danville stuffed it, so they got the ball back with good field position, but not much time. We stopped them and earned our first trip to Louisville. When we got to Louisville, we played one of our worst games of the season. We turned the ball over 6 times, blew a 14 point lead and trailed 28-20 with about 3 minutes to play and roughly 90 yards to paydirt. Chapman completed a long pass down the sideline Tim Barnett to get us near mid-field, then we advanced another 20 yards or so, before he completed a long TD pass (about 40 yards) to Darren Salyers. An option pitch to Jonathan Chapman was successful for the two point conversion and the game was headed to OT. It would eventually go to a second OT, where Breathitt, faced with a 4th and goal from the 16 went for it. Chapman threw a perfect pass to the corner of the end zone and Phillip Watts made a sliding catch, dragging his toes and somehow staying in bounds for the TD. I think anyway, I've never seen a clear enough look to know for sure if he was truly in or out, but it was a great play. Anyone who has seen it can vouch for it. We went on to force a fumble on 3rd down and we had defeated Franklin-Simpson for our first ever state title and a perfect 15-0 season.

 

1996

 

When 1996 rolled around, I was still happy that we'd won a state title, and I wasn't expecting anything like that again. Our team had graduated roughly 20 seniors, many of them key starters (QB - Waylon Chapman, FB/LB - Kenneth Combs, TE/LB - John Rader, WR/DB - Matt Sharp, plus nearly all of our offensive and defensive lines). So, to expect a repeat of 1995, from a school that had previously won nothing, would have been naive on my part.

 

We won the Rec Bowl against a Montgomery County team that was supposed to be really strong that season, 21-0. As the season progressed, our defense asserted itself as one of the best in the state, as they would pitch 7 shut outs in 15 games. This was key, because it allowed our young players on offense to mature. The regular season was fairly uneventful in some ways, en route to a 10-0 season. The playoffs were a whole different story though.

 

It all started with a round one matchup against Erlanger Lloyd. This was a Lloyd team that had won their district, but due to using an ineligible player, had been forced to forfeit several games. Needless to say, this wasn't the ideal first round opponent for an undefeated district champion. They had a very good QB. He was tough and really hurt us running the ball, but we eventually won a hard fought game, 34-19 I think. Then we played a very good Russell team (they also had a great running QB), but we outlasted them as well. Then came Newport, the district champs from that area. And, in what was supposed to be the toughest of the three opponents, Breathitt raced out to an 18-0 first quarter lead, and then took the air out of the ball and relied on the defense to bring home a 25-0 shutout victory to capture the regional title.

 

That set up a semi-final matchup with a team that was definitely on the rise, Boyle County. You may have heard of them. My best description of this game, was that it looked like Breathitt was playing against themselves. Boyle County didn't run the same offense as we did, but their defense was almost a mirror image. It was fast, quick, aggressive and suffocating. We scored on our first two possessions to take a 12-0 lead and I was thinking, "This is gonna be easy." Boy, was I wrong. Not only did we not score again, but we didn't even threaten. We could hardly muster a first down. Boyle scored at some point and it was a 12-7 game. They had the ball late in the 4th and threw a deep pass that could have easily been a TD had it not been for a great play by Will Noble to bat the ball away. That was basically the ballgame. We held on to win a real defensive struggle by a score of 12-7. I honestly think that '96 Boyle County team was the best we faced during our two state title seasons.

 

In Louisville, we faced Fort Knox and the great Derek Homer. We fell behind by 2 TD's early before fighting back. Late in the game we trailed 21-18 and Fort Knox had the ball trying to run the clock out. We were basically down to our last chance, we had just enough timeouts to get the ball back, IF we stopped them. And we did. When we got the ball back, we drove down into scoring range. Then, Coach Holcomb dialed up the same play that won the previous state championship...and Phillip Watts made the play again. Only this time he didn't have to slide...he had room to make a comfortable standing catch. That basically won the game, as there was only enough time for the kickoff and one more play.

 

I think Breathitt County probably played in two of the most exciting state championship games ever. And the way they ended, with the same guy, making a catch in pretty much the same spot, in do-or-die situations just adds something special to the story.

 

So there's my story. I don't expect many people to read it, because it's so long, but I think it's a good one.