IRVINE From the time Estill County star Caleb Bonny and his classmates were little boys playing youth basketball, they broke huddles with two words.

Rupp Arena!

“Everybody knew what that meant in this county,” Bonny says.

What “Rupp Arena” meant in Estill County was decades of yearning and frustration balled up into one.

 

 

For the first 100 years (1918-2017) in which the Kentucky Boys’ Sweet Sixteen crowned our state’s basketball champion, Estill County High School did not earn even one invitation to the party.

“What you have to understand,” says William Hardy, who has broadcast Estill County games on the radio for the past 27 years, “is that, deep down, many of us were not sure the day would ever come.”

 

http://www.kentucky.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/mark-story/article204788544.html

 

Link is about Estill County making school history and being able to play at Rupp Arena for the first time in school history.

Excited for the team, coaches and county...have a great tournament!

The state tourney is a different feel for the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th regions, I know from experience...to borrow from the SEC...It just means more!