Cincinnati Cobra

I believe Rob Wermeling down at Holy Cross is extremely interested in the job. He played for Coach Krumpelbeck back around the time that CCH had Todd Etler and I believe one or two other guys who spent some time in the minor leagues. Rob is an absolutely great guy who is really well liked in the classroom as well. His coaching resume may not be what Rowe and Bacigalupo are hoping for, but frankly speaking I'd attribute a lot of that to Rob just not really having the horses to do very much in his time at Holy Cross. I've also heard Greg Pass' name mentioned a couple of times since Krumpelbeck's retirement was announced.

It's a little bit of "telephone" but I spoke to a NKY baseball coach whose word I trust, and he was told by an assistant on Bill Krumpelbeck's staff that he was informed of his retirement, so to speak. I know Bill is typically a man of few words and never was much for talking to news reporters, but I thought his conspicuous lack of any comment whatsoever in any of the news stories about his retirement is further proof that it wasn't his choice to step down. It's no secret around Northern Kentucky that baseball players have been choosing not to attend CCH on account of Krumpelbeck over the course of the last 5+ years. The CCH guys I've talked to personally about it, across the board, have all said it was past his time to retire from coaching. He hung on impressively long, and that's extremely commendable, but I think it's a shame for his legacy that he hung on a little too long and left a lot of folks in his school community breathing sighs of relief that he's retired. I wish for his sake that he had left by his own choice, but it doesn't sound like he was making any plans to do that.

I was assuming Sully would be leaving Cooper after having such a row with the principal. That didn't seem like it would make a very great work environment for him to remain on teaching there, especially as head coach of a basketball program competing in the same region. I was unaware that he had taken a teaching job at Scott, so knowing that makes a lot more sense if that is the case. What kind of stipend is St. Henry offering for head coaches these days? How does their stipend compare to head coaches' stipends offered by public schools in the area? I was of the impression that in the last decade the diocese had done some work to try to get stipends for major sports regulated across the diocese. It's been a while since I had any direct knowledge of that from the inside of any diocesan school, but I was also of the impression that boosters are not currently permitted to offer supplementary money to pay coaches. Obviously at St. Henry Sully will be operating without geographic constraints in terms of where he can draw his players from so that is certainly an advantage of the St. Henry job. I'm still curious to know if there are any additional advantages at St. Henry to keep him there if a public school job comes open elsewhere in northern Kentucky where he would have the advantage of being in the school building during the day with his players in addition to his time on the court with them.

Considering the fact that Sully only needs 7 or 8 more years in the KTRS retirement system to retire with the maximum benefits from the state, I can't help but wonder if he doesn't bounce from St. Henry as soon as a decent public school job opens up elsewhere in NKY. I could see Holmes, Scott, Simon Kenton, Ryle, Dixie Heights, and Campbell County all as perfectly viable options for him, especially since his wife Andrea is already teaching and coaching at Scott. Scott, Simon Kenton and Campbell County all also give him the opportunity to move out of the 9th Region and see what he can do in the 8th or 10th. I think heading back to Cooper is less likely, but supposing Mike Wilson moves on from Cooper and the basketball job were to come back open there, maybe we'd see that happen too. Realistically speaking though, I just don't really see how St. Henry would have been able to make any kind of contractual provision that would make up for the amount of money that would be offered in retirement to Sully through KTRS once he is at his full tenure in the system, so the way I see it Sully still has significant reason to want to get himself back into a public school job.

Realistically speaking, I find it hard to believe a high school would have as much athletic success under the watch of a principal who actually doesn't care about athletics. I think this is much more accurately described as a principal who has a major issue seeing eye to eye with his basketball coach any longer.

I don't know anything concrete in regard to a corrective action plan being put into action for Coach Sullivan, but I do know that Sullivan had been receiving some criticism within the school community at Cooper for his willingness to tolerate the antics from Yamil Rondon and his family for a long while prior to the 2024 region tournament. Word from the handful of Northern Kentucky basketball coaches I know who are plugged into many if the goings-on in the area was that the Rondon family once again started getting vocal and causing a stink at Cooper threatening to that Yamil would transfer to Newport after the 2024 regional tournament had come and gone. Coach Sullivan took up for the Rondons with the Cooper administration in order to try to ice things over in an effort to keep Yamil playing for the Jaguars, and the Cooper administrators effectively rebuffed Sullivan and said "good riddance" to the Rondon family, and the Rondon family responded in kind by transferring him to Newport. Once that happened, Sullivan went ahead and interviewed for the Conner and Dixie Heights head coaching jobs, citing his frustration and falling out with the administrators at Cooper. Maybe the Cooper administrators had slapped Sullivan with a corrective action plan at the point where he was out interviewing for other jobs, maybe they hadn't. I don't know. But the fact is, Sullivan was out looking for a job outside of Cooper and he was making his dissatisfaction with the Cooper administration known. I guess I just can't say that I'm completely shocked to my core that those administrators, who Sullivan was out telling interviewers that he didn't want to work for anymore, would turn around the following year and part ways with him.

Interesting.

Do we have names for the mystery players?

I'm pretty sure the list with Bryan's name on it was produced by the Diocese as requirement put forth by the court system in the clergy abuse scandal settlement process. Koplyay is the head of HR and personnel for the Diocese so his name would have been attached to that list in some way, but the list itself was assembled by consultants from the FBI who were brought in to review all Diocesan files and establish who did and who didn't have substantiated abuse claims against them. So yeah you can link the list to Koplyay but that's because there was a court order that said Diocesan HR had to produce the list and he was the man in charge of HR.

It's almost as if he may not have actually known the full picture of what had really happened when his dad parted ways with CCH. I remember being told once that it's really tough to keep singing a song once you realize you don't know all the right words to it.

I can understand why he's angry and taking up for his dad, but Nick's rants are so poorly written out and presented. They read more like the rantings of my bipolar sister-in-law when she has gone off her meds. At one point I saw that Nick was including remarks about how "I don't quit. I'm just made different," in some of his posts and rantings. That kind of stuff comes off to me like nothing but braggadocio. Bragging on himself seems pretty odd and out of place for the subject that he's trying to talk about and it smacks more of just trying to earn clicks and attention online. He has also mentioned several times about what the "leaders" are deleting to cover up and how they are trying to push a false narrative. Yet it appears that he has deleted at least a couple of his Facebook posts where he was ranting about the "leaders" having posted on Facebook behind fake accounts, and he was providing screenshots of decade-plus Facebook accounts that were legitimate accounts belonging to actual people...yet Nick alleged that they were fakes that belonged to CCH leaders. Once people started calling him crazy on the comments for posting screenshots of actual people and alleging that they were fakes accounts, he deleted the posts. Nick seems to be delving further and further into going straight conspiracy theorist. I keep preparing myself for him to post about how the leaders are doing all of this as part of a master-plan crafted light years away on Giedi Prime by Baron Harkonnen, and how everyone on Earth should beware.

That's fair. I'm sure there are plenty of organizations that vary from one another in how much they do or don't want to involve multiple managerial levels in their personnel matters.

My assumption would be that if my boss' supervisor had already chosen to step in himself and handle a personnel issue with a specific employee, unless I was told otherwise then I sure better be copying my boss' supervisor on any future communications I made about that same specific employee. I wouldn't be cutting my boss out of the loop, rather, I would be also including my boss' supervisor in the loop since they already had a history of involvement.

I completely agree with everything you wrote, right up through your second "etc etc."

It would seem that you have a contrastingly different stance about that from Ruthsatz's former employers.

I think this situation is understandably embarrassing for the Ruthsatz family. Scott was told he was being inducted to the CCH Hall of Fame and invited his family and friends. Then he was told the plans were off and he wasn't in the HOF. Now in that fallout everyone is also finding out that he was actually fired from the job when he sold it to everyone including his family that he resigned. That's even more embarrassing. Maybe the bishop flexed a little more in all of this than he needed to but it's still his flex to be able to make. The CCH admins made their first mistake in not correcting the story when Ruthsatz and papers and news were all saying he resigned. Maybe that was because they liked Scott and hadn't wanted to fire him in the first place, maybe it wasn't. I dunno. If they'd been transparent about the fact that Scott had been fired in the first place, though, then I don't think there'd be as much pressure on them to put him into their Hall of Fame. The CCH admins made their next mistake in going ahead with trying to induct Scott into their HOF in the first place. If my boss tells me I have to fire one of my employees, I don't go back to my boss 6 months later and ask if I can give the guy a lifetime achievement award. And if the situation here is that they were given approval by Superintendent McGuire to induct him and then Bishop Iffert stepped in later and overruled McGuire when he found out, then the principal and AD at CCH are the two with egg on their faces for not actually getting approval from the actual guy who had Ruthsatz fired. It all stinks for everybody involved. The CCH admins tried to do Ruthsatz a solid by letting him save face and spin his firing as a resignation. Then they tried to extend that even further by honoring him in the HOF. Their mistakes along the way look like they've come back to bite them in the butt in a really public way. Ruthsatz is going through the public embarrassment of having it made clear that he deceived everyone about resigning when he'd actually been shown the door. Plus he had the HOF honor waved in front of his face and then pulled away from him.

I believe the diocese is supposed to be kept in the loop for any special honorees recognized by any of their schools. My assumption would be that the diocese requires that in order to give them better jurisdiction to approve or reject anyone when they feel the need to step in. I would think that is all generally handled through the office of the superintendent of schools. However, in this case, with the Bishop being the one who directed for Coach Ruthsatz to be fired, I think the Bishop also stepped in after the fact when he found out late in the game that Ruthsatz was being inducted to CCH's hall of fame.

The Bishop was not going to allow CCH to induct a coach to their hall of fame after he had given the order for that coach to be fired.

I have a dear friend within the diocesan operation whose word I trust absolutely implicitly. They told me that Coach Ruthsatz's hall of fame induction was shot down by none other than Bishop Iffert. Iffert was unaware that CCH intended to put Scott Ruthsatz in their hall of fame until last week, and he put the kibosh on it as soon as he found out. That would explain the course of events and why CCH would go to the trouble of putting out advertisements for the hall of fame banquet with Ruthsatz's face all over them and then end up walking back on his induction.

Does Ryan have roots down around Murray? Or did he attend Murray State? It seems like a bit of a surprise for a program to reach out to an assistant coach without any head coaching experience from a football program located 5 hours away. Honestly, if it's true, good for the athletic director at Calloway Co. for taking the bull by the horns and reaching to good candidates to try to get some good applicants for the job.

I don't know much about this game other than reading about Adair County being a top ten team in the state and Cumberland County being unranked in the state.

How many basketball players did Ryle have missing from their roster because of football?

I know they played in the state finals while Bryson Warner was running the show. That was around 2006 or 2007. And then I believe they lost in the semis to Trinity three or four years after that.

Great Crossing is in uncharted territory. They're a pretty new program and I read that they hadn't won a playoff game until this season. There's a lot of excitement and nerves built into that, and it's a lot for a coaching staff to have to keep control of if a team program goes from an all time o-fer record in the playoffs to an appearance in the semifinals of the largest football classification in the state. It's been a while, but Ryle has been here before. Engler is a seasoned coach. The Raiders have been playing a dominant style of football all season. I think Ryle rolls at home in this one. If Great Crossing pulls off the upset, that says a whole lot about not only the players they have on their team, but almost as much or more about the coaches they have on their sideline. Good luck to both teams.

Every time I talk to my friends in the Beechwood football camp I hear about how Coach Volker is trying to run a college defense with high schoolers playing for him and how that just isn't going to work in the long run. If everything they keep saying is true, I think the long run for this season comes to an end for Beechwood on Friday night. I haven't kept up with much football around Lexington for the last few years, but I checked the scoreboard on the KHSAA's website and the Lexington Christian defense has 8 forced fumbles and 19 picks. Their quarterback has thrown 2 picks on 114 attempts. Beechwood's defense has 3 forced fumbles and 15 picks, and their quarterback has thrown 5 picks on 228 attempts. I have a feeling that there's potential here for a turnover to be a big turning point in the outcome of the game. With the game being played at Beechwood I would certainly say the Tigers have more than a chance in the game, but I think it's more than likely that Lexington Christian gets the win. My best guess is that the final score has both teams in the high twenties or low thirties with the game decided by one score for the winners.