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.

 

 

That was 88, his senior season.

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.

 

 

This is exactly what I had hoped for when I started the thread... someone to tell a story about a particular state championship team, about how special they were and obstacles they had to overcome. Great penmanship and a great read.

 

I remember those games against LLoyd and you guys had a great team.

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.

That was the 1988 game.

That was 88, his senior season.

 

 

Ok, I thought I was close. Boone had some nice teams in the 80's as well... I remember them having such a great running attack with Ransdell, Law and Smith and the explosive passing attack the Shamrocks brought up to NKY.

You want a story, I have a story for you:

 

Trinity 1994 - 11-4 (12th State Championship)

 

We started off the season with a rather ho-hum 4-0 start, with wins over Doss (26-0), DeSales (28-6), Ballard (30-20), and Waggener (28-0). Then came the X game, as seniors we had never beaten X on any level, we lost as frosh 13-7 on a late kickoff return, lost in JV 9-6 (I think), lost as juniors 9-6 in OT, and now as seniors our one chance to exorcise those demons. Now, all week prior to, Coach Lampley was telling us how we hadn't been playing, or practicing well, and that we were going to get flat BLOWN OUT by X, we weren't buying, we couldn't get beat that bad. Anyway, it poured, and poured, and poured that whole day of the game, and the whole game itself...after the first two posessions we were down 14-0 to mighty X....we were shocked nonetheless. However, this was our first sign of being a resilliant team, we stiffened up, and battled with everything we had. X got no more first downs throughout regulation. We tied the game midway in the 4the 4th quarter on a brilliant run by Shawn Johnson. WE caused them to give the ball back to us, and we drove, and drove....time's running out, we set up for a game winning field goal by Rob Bironas (current Titan's kicker), the snap went through our holder's hands, we went to OT and lost....hear wrenching w/o question. Now for part two of our season...

 

This is the bad stretch. We really had no identity yet, people were in the wrong positions, and we were just going through the motions. The senior leadership was there, but no one could really put their finger on what was wrong. We lost more games in a row (4 in total) to Central 15-0 (we got manhandled whistle to whistle), Ben Davis 52-21 (I promise the refs made the score worse than it would've been), and Eastern 21-14 in OT (this was the one that "shocked" our systems. That following Sunday at Church, my mother asked me what was wrong, I told her I didn't think we could win again, it was weird, it had been a month since we had won. WE had practice that Sunday, as we always did, and we got our butt's handed to us by the staff, they guranteed us, that we would turn it around, and that people were going to be moving to new positions, to make us better immediately. Boy were they right.

 

Part III. Well on Monday, we had a meeting before practice which was rare at the time, and shuffled things around. We had a new offensive lineman, and new tight end, a new defensive end, and a new safety. Things looked and felt completely different, and we played completely different. We came out and beat Holy Cross, at HC (40-7), and then won a must to get in the playoffs against J-Town (38-7)...

 

The Playoffs. This was where the magic really happened, we were now 6-4, not world beaters by any stretch, but playing much better and getting a little of that swagger back. We opened up with Doss we had already beaten them once, this should be no problem, well, we probably looked past them a bit, and were in a dog fight, Shawn hurt his ankle real bad, and couldn't play anymore, Gary Gumm, Don Patterson, and Co. were killing us, so was Lavell Boyd. We were down 8 points with less than a minute to go. Alex Ingram runs a kickoff back a long way, down inside the 10, we end up scoring, and are now down 2. We have to go for two in this situation. Guess what? we jump offsides...ouch. So now we have to for two from the 8, it is not looking good, we had twins out to the right, and the TE in a slot position, the twins ran slants, the TE ran an arrow. That ball seemed to be in the air for an eternity. Cash lofted a perfect ball to Rob Delesio in the flat, and he ran it in for the tying two points. We won in OT (24-21). Now a late thursday night rematch with Central, man was that a monster, it was bitterly, cold, I mean miserable. The field was a sheet of ice, and we knew that we were in for a dogfight. Statistically we were beating them, they had scored on a KO return and a busted pass, that we thought had been blown dead. However, the score read a different story as it was 12-6 (obviously their kicking game was not working), it is getting late in the game 1:06 if you are counting, they have 4 and inches, to seal it, the end looked nie. They get an offsides call, not it is 4th and 5. They could still go for it, and make us score a TD to win. Central decides to punt the ball, unbelievably, Reggie White blocks it, picks it up, and runs it in for a score. The score now reads 13-12 us. Amazing. We kick off to them, they line up in shotgun (for the first time of the season), the snap goes over the QB's head, Reggie White picks up the ball and scores AGAIN.....we got a 15 yard celebration penalty, but what can you do? They said we missed the long extra point, but who cares, ball game (19-12). I promise that after that most of us seniors, really felt that we were now in the driver's seat to win the state championship, (let me clarify this, the very next night St. Xavier put out the powerhouse Male team of Chris Redman, Ibn Green, and Co..) It was wide open in Louisville, and that powerhouse in Boone County. We went on to walk through Eastern (27-6), and North Hardin (24-11). While X got put out by Fern Creek (14-10). Fern Creek got blasted by Boone County (36-19)....setting up Boone -vs- Trinity IV.

 

The Championship: At this time, we were officially the underdogs, though, none of us felt like we were. WE really thought, with our coaches, gameplan, and history we would win the game, Shaun Alexander or not. More happened, our coaches had noticed that Boone did nothing but run, run, run, and run some more. They decided that our front six would play goal line, taking out the OL, leaving our two all state LB's against Mr. Alexander. What a brilliant, brilliant call. On defense Boone would switch sides, between the strong and weak sides, so we decided to go on "quick" on every snap, and get them out of their rythm. Now, add to that the fact that Coach Lampley decided to tell us seniors that he was going out with us, in this game, (I just got chills typing that), we were destined, or so it felt. They win the toss and defer, we receive the opening kickoff, run a sideline return left, and it was WIDE WIDE WIDE open...Shawn goes untouched for 87 yards to put us up 7-0. Talk about setting the tone. WE kickoff to them, and everyone knows to gang tackle #37. They go three and out, punt to us. We go three and out, punt to them. We force a fumble on that punt return with a big hit on #12 (I think his name was Chris or something). We get the ball back but stall. Again, Boone goes 3 and out, and punt. This time though, our coaches had noticed that LB's could really stick with the slot receivers or the TE. We had a 30 + yard reception, by the TE, down to the four, and Chris Cash stuck it in a couple of plays later. It was now 14-0, and we were clicking. The very next drive Boone County, gets it togethger and goes on a monster 14-15 play drive with Shaun scoring right before the half, making it 14-7 at the half. We were almost there, no one believed but we were now so close. The third quarter was really a stalemate, we got a lot of yards, another 30 + catch by the TE, a 50+ yarder by Corey Taylor...we just couldn't put it in. The real key was the fact that Boone County got ZERO first downs in the second half. They threw two passes, one a screen pass to Bryan Mainey (?), and the other was a halfback pass by Shaun, that was intercepted by Matt Janes. We capped off the day with a 55 yard scamper by Shaun right down our sidelines......

 

That's my State Championship memory....

I have said before that one of the more improbable drives to a state football championship in Kentucky occurred in the 1999 4A playoffs. There were a number of viable contenders for the title that year. Teams outside of Jefferson County may have been overall as powerful as any in the history of 4A football. A strong argument could be made that Lexington Henry Clay, led by Shane Boyd and a host of other Division 1 players, was the best team in the state. Lexington Bryan Station had Shelton, one of the finer running backs in the state in the past decade. Out West, the Hopkinsville Tigers had a potent offense that many believed would lead them to the crown. In Louisville, the big three were dominant, although St. X, led by one of the finer offensive lines in their history, was generally felt to be the team to beat from Jefferson County.

 

St. X's second round game against PRP was closer than expected (20 to 10), but the fireworks began in round three. X had vanquished Male with little problem in the regular-season game at Manual Stadium. The playoff game was also at Manual Stadium and was played in a driving rain. Going into the fourth quarter, Male was leading, but X righted the ship and held on for a hard fought 19-10 victory. The semifinal game was played in Hopkinsville, and the Hoptown Tigers raced to a huge early lead. X clawed back and with about one minute left in the game an X receiver outjumped a Hoptown defender for the winning tally. The title game at the old Fairgrounds was a seesaw battle with both Bryan Station and X holding leads at one time or another. Regulation ended in a tie. Trailing 31-28 and facing fourth and one St. X ran the ball (I know that this will come as a shock to many that X would actually run the ball:D ) and Ryan Payne followed all-state offensive lineman Will Rabitin in the end zone for the victory, and the state title.

 

Thus, in the third round X was trailing going into the first play of the fourth quarter. In the semifinal they were trailing going into the final minute. In the state championship game they were trailing going into the final play of overtime. If there have ever been more stirring and dramatic finishes in three consecutive games on the road to a state title I do not recall them.

that easily has to be my longest post ever.

that easily has to be my longest post ever.

 

 

It was a good one though. :thumb:

^ thanks bro.

Man I do not remember all of that but I do remember that the last time a non-Jefferson Co. school won the 4A State Championship was a Mark Brown led Nelson Co. team that came through Trinity on the way to the finals.

ttt

The Pikeville teams of 87,88,89. These teams were the stuff of legend. The 87 team was ranked #1 in the state in all classes. I was in grade school then but those teams remain the most dominate Ive ever seen.

Man I do not remember all of that but I do remember that the last time a non-Jefferson Co. school won the 4A State Championship was a Mark Brown led Nelson Co. team that came through Trinity on the way to the finals.

 

 

I actually work with a guy who was on that team.

I actually work with a guy who was on that team.

 

They had alot of talent. What most people forget is they were better the next year but their QB went down against Cental Hardin with a broken fibula. He played against X while wearing a cast and took NC in at half with the lead. Early in the 3rd qtr he was hit by Bernard Jackson from X and was not able to return. It was a great game. X ended up winning it and the state that year.

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.

 

 

 

Very nice! :ylsuper: