A new year, back to business

Holiday tournaments are behind us now for another year and the winter break is behind us so for the next few weeks it’s back to normal, or at least as close to normal as we can get when you wake up to an outside temperature of one degree here in southern Kentucky.

For at least the next couple of weeks, our basketball action will be centered around winning regular season games and hopefully securing a better position within the 16th District standings.

Fans can start paying a little attention to the polling positions as we are into January and looking at just over six weeks (can you believe that) of regular season play left in this 2017-18 roundball season.

In the days ahead, our Lady Bulldogs will travel south just a few miles for this Thursday night’s matchup against cross-state boundary rival Pickett County, then we head once again into the meat and potatoes portion of 16th District action in bang, bang, bang fashion.

Always the first to complete the 16th District round of games, Clinton County will face Metcalfe County this Friday, we travel west to Cumberland County next Tuesday, January 9, then we play host to Russell County the following Friday, January 12 to close out play against the three 16th District schools.

Hang on, things are far from over.

Clinton County plays host this year to the 4th Region All A Classic tournament semi-finals and championship games on January 18 and 19 with the hopes of advancing on to the All ‘A’ Classic state tournament the following week in Richmond, January 24-28.

Best of the Lakes another success

Eight teams, including our own Lady Dawgs, from eight different communities in two states converged on Clinton County High School last week for our own Best of the Lakes Holiday Classic and from all accounts, the event was not only a success from a host school standpoint, but was again considered to have been a top quality event by those seven schools visiting.

As was the case with our boys’ tournament the week prior, I did get a chance to talk to several coaches and fans from visiting schools about how they were being treated by our community during their visit, and while I didn’t get the chance to talk to all of the schools (more about that later), every single person visiting with the tournament couldn’t speak higher of the hospitality that was shown their way.

In fact – putting my Chamber of Commerce and Tourism promoting hats on here for a moment, Lady Bulldog Coach Darrell Thompson even told me that some of the parents who had traveled here from Dayton High School in the northern Kentucky region, told him they were planning on returning to our county to enjoy a summer vacation.

Don’t get much better than that.

Missed a couple of days – thanks Randy.

This has been one of the most wide-spread flu and cold seasons that I can remember for several years, and while I am usually able to shrug the flu bug off, every once in awhile it manages to get the best of me.

That was the case come Friday morning. After completing the Public Address work for the four games played in the Best of the Lakes on Thursday night, I could tell things just weren’t right with the voice. On Friday morning, my fears were realized to be true when I could barely muster more than a scratchy whisper. It’s hard to do P.A. work with no voice, plus, I didn’t want to be around the players and fans and likely spread the bug even more.

Thankfully, Randy Speck was quick to agree to come to the rescue and from all reports, did a great job standing in for me during the final two days of our Classic.

Here’s a public Thank You to Randy for coming to the rescue. Hopefully, I’ve got the flu bug behind me for the rest of the year and can enjoy completing the season behind the microphone.

Holiday attire winner announced

I’ve been long complimented on some of my ballgame outfits that I occasionally don in an effort to bring some humor to the gym from time to time.

During the Twin Lakes Holiday Classic a couple of week ago, I had to give a tip of my hat to our Clinton County Attorney, Michael Rain.

Rains, a Clinton County High School alumni and a fan of all Big Blue sports, as well as all sports involving the U.K. Wildcats, took the Christmas sweater to a higher level when he showed up wearing a complete Christmas suit.

Trying to describe Michael’s attire in words would be just too difficult, so here he is, in all his glory.

and…

It’s high school basketball season and I’ll see you in the gym – don’t bother me until April!