Sir!

Districts - week of 10/12 Regionals- week of 10/19 Semi-state & QF - week of 10/26 State semi & finals - week of 11/2 Semi-state pairings are pre-determined (e.g., this year winner Region 9 plays at winner of Region 10). Bracket thereafter I believe is done by a random draw?

Good luck to Brossart this weekend. Glad Senior night at NKU went well.

It would be interesting to run Maher-weighted offensive stats for the top scorers in NK, using the individual opponent Maher Rating as the multiplier instead of the average opponent Maher Rating. To account for goals and assists, make goals worth 2 and assists worth 1 in base value (fairly standard weighting). Where an opponent has a Maher Rating of less than 1, make the multiplier 1 (they all are worth 1, but some are worth up to 12 or 13 if you score on a top team). Use the Ohio individual Maher Rating for teams playing Ohio opponents. Thoughts?

I'll go with Cooper over Boone 2-1 in a hard fought match. I really appreciate how much heart Boone is playing with this year, but ultimately Snow is too much. I think an underappreciated part of his game is how much he disrupts/unsettles defenses making it harder for them to transition to attack quickly and allowing Cooper a moment to organize it's defense. I'll take Ryle over Conner 3-0 in a game Ryle controls the whole way.

Darn spell check... Lechter County Central.

One week, to the day, after Lechter County Central beat Buckhorn 24-0, coach Tiffany Holbrook led the Cougars to a second mauling of the Wildcats, this time by a modest 21-0 scoreline. Damen Holbrook (Jr) leads the Cougars in goal scoring and Dustin Holbrook (Sr) leads the team in assists. Coach Holbrook must be very proud of her boys.

Oldham County looks tough. Clayton Wirth (#9) with 27 goals and 7 assists involved in just under half of OC goals. Oldham County has opponent's Maher Rating of 6.7... so pretty strong. How did Wirth look?

NKY also recognizes an OPOY and DPOY. This discussion thus far looks like it's focused on NKY.

How much time did Woodford County and Madison Central have between games? Hopefully everyone came out healthy... big week for Woodford County next week with Dunbar and Henry Clay.

Might be Hedenberg. His dad is the gym teacher at Ruth Moyer in Fort Thomas.

Ryle beat HHS 1-0. Ryle is talented, deep and has some nice sized kids. Ryle dominated play in the first half. They didn't have a ton of clear chances, but looked more dangerous first half. Birds did a great job staying organized and moving the ball quickly on attack. HHS had several free kick opportunities including one that hit the crossbar. Score at half-time 0-0. Ryle scored on a long (maybe 25 yard) really well hit strike after dispossessing HHS playing out of the back fairly early in the second half. After about 5 minutes of looking down, HHS came back really strong and put a ton of pressure on Ryle during the last 15 minutes of the game. HHS had maybe 6 or 7 corners in the second half. Ryle cleared at least one ball off its own goal line and the Ryle goalie had a great save to tip wide a shot heading for the top left corner. Very exciting game and well played by both teams. On balance the score is probably a fair result, but the Birds put Ryle to the test. Good luck to Ryle in the remaining games.

It looked like Ryle had close to 25 players dressed for the game. Not sure with that many why they need to play their top freshman on both frosh and jv, but to each their own. From what I saw Ryle had the upper hand over CCH and it showed up in the final score line. CCH played Ryle tough, but 4-5 top players in the freshmen class do matter. HHS will need to find another level of play to beat Ryle tomorrrow, but they have some nice players and the frosh coach does a good job of getting them to play together. Good luck Birds!

Highlands 1 Simon Kenton 0. Ryle 2 CCH 0. HHS plays Ryle at 9:00 am.

Has Rodgers been on the team from the get go or did he just see how much fun Boniface was having and decide to join? Looks like Rodgers has played in 5 games and scored twice, while Boniface has 11 in 9 games. Nice pickup for a couple of players their senior year.

Goal scorers?

Score was reported to KHSAA initially as 1-0 St X win... corrected now. Bummer. Still not a bad showing. Good luck to Trinity on Saturday!

Great result for St. X. No goalscorer recorded for St. X so possibly decided on an own goal? Trinity gets the Sallies on the second game of their KY trip this Saturday. Will be interesting to see how Trinity does compared to St. X.

BTW, when was the last time you saw Brady play? You should totally get out from behind your computer and come cheer him on at a game some time. OMG... did I just type that?

Mid-season I'd say that Brady Gessenhues is most definitely playing like one of the top players in NKY. He has been particularly effective and still remains a scoring threat even though he's been "buried in the back" for the past couple of weeks. The kid is playing with heart, for his team, and showing all of his talents and assets back there. I hope a college coach catches his game the way he's been playing of late.

It is interesting that two of the top four girls teams in that state (Assumption and Owensboro Catholic) have 50% of their roster comprised of freshmen and sophomores. NDA comes in at 48%. The current top team in the state (Sacred Heart) has a roster comprised of 38% and HHS has 39% freshmen and sophomores. This naturally follows from development of the game on the girls' side (I posit). The average speed of play (technical and tactical) and the number of girls who can play at that level has been steadily increasing. Whereas in the past it may have been an advantage to put a bigger bodied Senior on the field over a smaller if more skilled underclassman, many teams now can attack as a team and defend collectively so that they get more mileage out of playing the best soccer players and not just the best or biggest athletes. It will be interesting to see if this really is a trend going forward.

For a guy who "could care less" you sure care a lot.

Of course you're right, but Jeez, it's a lot harder to grind an axe on a 1-0 loss than it would have been on a 5-0 or 7-1 loss.

CCH tops the team defense stats with 7 goals against in 12 games. Way to go Colonels!

People will legitimately knock the weak sauce teams that some of the stats leaders play against, but the sophomore at Franklin-Simpson (Caleb Wilson) with 32 goals and 7 assists in 9 games can flat out play. The only difficult team on Franklin-Simpson's schedule is South Warren, which has a Maher Rank of 15 and beat Bowling Green last week in PKs. Franklin-Simpson plays at South Warren on Monday, September 21. South Warren has 7 players who play with Wilson on the SKY 99 (U17B) team, including Fahrudin Deversevic who leads South Warren with 14 goals and 3 assists. SKY 99 didn't get out of group play in State Cup this year, partly because Deversevic was in training camp with the Bosnia-Herzogovenia U17 National team that weekend. I think South Warren easily handles Franklin Simpson, but it should be a really interesting game to watch with (at least) two exceptional players on the pitch. I'd love to hear if someone catches this game.

The concept of program strength over time and across all three teams (frosh, jv and Varsity) is important to getting and keeping high end teams scheduled. If the Varsity team loses or ties a perennial powerhouse, but the JV and frosh squads win or play well, the powerhouse is much more likely to renew the contract the following year.