Ashland will try and become the 13th team in Tomcat history to have an undefeated regular season Friday night when it visits Lexington Catholic.
Ashland secured the Class 4A district championship with a 48-28 victory over Johnson Central on Friday night. With a win this week, they would become only the fifth Tomcat team since 1942 to be unbeaten in the regular season. Joining the 1942 team are 1958, 1975 and 2020. That’s it. Both the 1967 and 1990 state championship teams suffered their only loss during the regular season.
The KHSAA playoff system did not start until 1959. The Tomcats claimed mythical championships through the years prior to the playoff system. The 1931 team that went 10-0 clobbered Decatur, Ga., 80-6 at Armco Field in a game that was set up late to determine the top team in Dixie. Five decades later, in 1981, a news service poll that was checking up on national rankings from the 1930s declared the Tomcats as the best team in the country in 1931, per research from Tomcat radio voice Tyler Rowland.
Ashland’s last undefeated team came in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The Tomcats finished 11-0. They were 6-0 in the regular season with several games cancelled because of COVID and then ran the table in the postseason to perfection.
Coach Tony Love celebrates the state championship in 2020 alongside Gage Layman. That team was the last one to have an undefeated regular season. The won six games in the regular season and then five in the playoffs to finish 11-0 in a COVID-shortened season. Besides them, only three other Tomcat teams have had an undefeated regular season since 1942.
These Tomcats have secured the opportunity to play more home games when the postseason begins a week from Friday. Ashland goes into the last regular-season game with the top RPI ranking in Class 4A. They need to win Friday to keep that standing and then would still have to potentially (likely?) battle through the northern Kentucky gauntlet of Covington Catholic and Fort Thomas Highlands before the RPI seeding takes real effect.
Covington Catholic wasn’t in the top 10 of the RPI but make no mistake, the Colonels are good but they have an interesting first round game with Johnson Central, the most dangerous 3-7 team in Kentucky.
I saw Covington Catholic in person throttle Class 6A Ryle in the opening game of the season. And Highlands is Highlands, the district champion and one of the favorites to win Class 4A.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with Ashland’s coaches and players to present them with my new book and that day I asked them: How do you want to be remembered? They have the chance to etch their name in rare air with a win on Friday night. An unbeaten regular season makes you memorable.
Below are the years that Ashland had a perfect regular season, Eight of those seasons came between 1926-1935 including six in a row from 1926-1931. They had a 60-0-4 streak ended on a last-second play against Erie, Pennsylvania, at Armco Field in 1932.
Here are the dozen Tomcat teams that had an undefeated regular season.
One of the area’s best storytellers has penned another informative tale about 11 players who have stood the test of time, and one of the most cherished rosters in the rich Ashland football history.
Mark Maynard, former editor and longtime sportswriter for The Daily Independent and current managing editor of Kentucky Today, releases a new book next month titled “The Boys They Called JAWS.”
It’s a deeper, more detailed story about a beloved Tomcats team, a fierce defense and an unforgettable season.
Maynard believes a book can offer more than a well-crafted article or feature. The pages offer a rousing chance to reminisce and relive memories still talked about today.
“It’s not news, it’s reacting to something that’s happened,” Maynard said. “I think it’s important to give some of the background that people don’t know. I’ve only written one fiction book. Everything else has been about things people may already know, and generally they know that Ashland’s 1975 team was called JAWS. Why were they called JAWS? Not everybody knows that, and it has some other neat things that happened during that time.”
Maynard graduated from Ashland in 1975 and became great friends with many on the vaunted Ashland defense that dominated the gridiron the following fall. The Tomcats would win 14 games that season, tied for the most with the 1990 state champions.
The 1975 Cats earned the at-large state championship. Due to unfortunate timing, a thrilling road playoff win at Paducah did not come with a Class 3A title. In February of that year, the Board of Control for the Kentucky High School Athletic Association met and implemented a four-class system for football. The champion from the Louisville area would meet the at-large champion in a winner-take-all scenario.
It was the first season in which any Louisville school played a team from outside Jefferson County for a state title.
St. Xavier, a private school, wore down the Tomcats in the second half on its home field, using a massive roster and constant substitutions on both offense and defense. Ashland gave the Tigers their toughest test of the season. The Tomcats only trailed 6-0 at halftime before falling for the only time that year, 20-0.
“I grew up with those guys,” Maynard said. “I knew many of them very well. I have written a ton about them throughout my time at The Daily Independent. I interviewed (former coach) Herb Conley in podcasts, and I have a lot of fresh quotes from him that people have never heard. I went back and got more information from the newspapers and writers who covered them at the time.
“They know what happened, but people may not know everything about them,” he added. “I hope that they will pick this book up and go through it and see what an amazing season that was and how good they were.”
The JAWS nickname originated after Conley and family attended the famous JAWS movie over a summer vacation. Ashland was enjoying one of its most successful stretches during Conley’s tenure, and a defining description of his defense could add extra motivation and reignite the physicality of a team that didn’t make the playoffs the previous year.
“Herb knew they could be really good,” Maynard recalled. “The other coaches were into it. They talked to the team and told them they were thinking about it. The team wanted to do it. Of course, 18-year-olds would want that nickname. Herb told them that they need to live up to it. If you do this, you need to live up to it. They proved it early in the season. They didn’t give them the name until they upset No. 1 Bryan Station in the second week of the season. They did it with defense. After that, it took off. They just annihilated people. The offense was good too. It wasn’t solely built on defense.”
Maynard said the personal connection to the team was the main reason he wrote the book. He also knew the team’s connection to the community. The players bleed maroon. They grew up on their streets. They were friends with their kids. They called Ashland home.
“The team holds special memories for me,” Maynard said. “They were a bunch of fun guys. They weren’t prima donnas or anything like that at all. They were respected. They were all Ashland kids. There were no recruits or transfers that came in to help them. They were Ashland kids, and that made it more special. It’s why the community wrapped their arms around them. They loved them. They had the band play the JAWS theme when the defense came on the field. The place was packed every Friday night.”
The postseason included a long cross-state trip to Paducah for the at-large state championship. It would be a six-hour bus ride, but the town had other plans. The community raised money for a Southern Airways flight so they could arrive for the biggest game of the season in just 60 minutes.
Maynard has many of these stories inside the new book. It speaks highly of a group and a team that people are still talking about them a half century later.
“This team did a lot of firsts,” Maynard said. “It was a fun book to write, and it was fun to revisit those games again. I had been planning to write this book for 10 years. The team was adored in Ashland.
“I have thought so much about this book for so many years that the words just came out,” he added. “ I knew the games, and I knew what had happened. We have stats in the back of the book. The cover has the iconic picture of that team. I really enjoyed writing it. I have written so many stories, but books have a different excitement. You try to make it as perfect as can be.”
“The Boys They Call JAWS” will be released in late September. Readers can preorder a softback or hardback edition of the book.
Rick Sang and I took a deeper dive on the photograph of Terry Fish’s reported 47-yard field goal in 1974 for the Ashland Tomcats.
If you look at the photo, the 40-yard marker painted on the wall is clearly shown behind the Bryan Station bench. So, it was probably kicked from about the 44. Greg Estep’s hold looks to be on or about that spot. BUT the reported distance doesn’t account for the extra 10 yards from the goal line to the back of the end zone. That would make it a 54-yard field goal, which would have been a state record and still would rank sixth all-time in Kentucky high school football history.
A newspaper story about the game reveals the line of scrimmage was the 32 and then there was a 5-yard penalty on the Tomcats pushing it back to the 37. The standard from the snap to holder is seven yards, putting the hold on the 44, and the photograph shows that to be true.
My best guess is that the ball was on the 37 and they added 10 yards for the goal line-to-end zone distance to make it a 47-yard kick. But that’s now how it should have been scored. Ten yards is added from the point of the kick, not the line of scrimmage, making it a 54-yard kick.
The photo also shows the perfect technique on display. His kick made it 3-0 and Wendell Fugitt returned a fumble for a touchdown for a 9-0 lead. The extra point was blocked, which again shows you how much had to go right for Fish to boom a field goal of that distance. It took a perfect snap, perfect hold, perfect blocking and perfect kick.
And if he kicked it from the 44, which sure looks like happened, it was a 54-yard kick. He would have had the record until 2004 when Taylor Long kicked a 55-yard field goal for Christian County. That would mean Fish had the state record for 30 years before it would have been broken. But it was never recognized as such.
Schools must turn in a verified account of records for the KHSAA to consider them. Ashland apparently did not do that – or even think to do it – in 1974. I’m not even sure when the KHSAA began accepting records to be quite honest.
Tyler Pack of Johnson Central holds the state record of a 60-yard field goal. It was interesting because it came on a free kick in a game the Golden Eagles’ won easily. On a punt or kickoff, you can make a fair catch, and the coach can send out the kicker for a free kick from that spot. No rush from the opponents; just tee it up and kick. It usually happens with not much time remaining in a quarter, half or game. A missed kick can be returned, and the opponent takes possession if the kick is missed. (Note to coaches: It’s an interesting play to consider if you have a good kicker and if you have somebody who can fair catch a ball on the opponents’ side of the field).
Pack also had a 58-yard field goal and his 89-yard punt is also a state record. He had some kind of leg.
Aaron Pettrey of Raceland had field goals of 58 yards in 2003 and 52 in 2002. He went on to kick for Ohio State and had a cameo with the Cincinnati Bengals.
But Terry Fish’s long kick between the uprights on scoreboard side of the field in a 9-6 win over Bryan Station at Putnam Stadium remains the Tomcat record, but belongs in the state record book as well.
I’m sure he would been proud to own the state record for so long.
There have been three sets of goalposts in the 89-year history of Putnam Stadium. The first ones were shaped like an H and that were the standard from 1937 to at least 1972 (still researching that one). There have been two sets of the t-shaped goalposts – the first coming in 1974 when the goalposts were moved from the goal line to the back of the end zone – and the second when the renovation took place following the 2013 season.
That set of goal posts are the same ones being used now and were donated by Rick and Jana Sang. They have one of the goal posts from 1974-2013 in pieces and would like to give it a good home somewhere. It needs some work done to put it back together again. Somewhere outside Putnam Stadium might be a good place for this great piece of history.
Some quick research revealed unusual statistics concerning field goals and the Putnam Stadium goalposts who, if they could talk, may remember the field goals missed more than the ones that were made. I may try and set up that interview later.
One of Ashland’s most famous field goals didn’t happen in a home game. That one belonged to John Paul Walters, AKA “The Toe,” who kicked a game-winning field goal against Ironton in a 3-0 victory at Beechwood Stadium in 1950. It was the only field goal of his career, but it was a big one. He did connect on a dozen extra points.
Walters’ game-winning kick from 15 yards out grazed the crossbar before tricking over. He used a square-toed shoe and he had to practically beg coach Charlie Eblen he could make it. The kick became so famous that it was rumored someone had offered him $500 for his cleats. Walters told me that was “misleading because they’d have sure got it.”
Paul Hill (kicker) and John Radjunas (holder) were part of the first field goal in Putnam Stadium history.
But the FIRST field goal made in Putnam Stadium didn’t come in the 1930s, 1940s or even the 1950s. It came during the state championship season of 1967 when Paul Hill connected on 24-yard field goal against Stonewall Jackson. It put the Tomcats ahead 3-0 in an eventual 13-3 loss. That was the only defeat in a 13-1 Class AA championship season.
Now, there were some extra point kicks in that 30-year span from 1937 to 1967 but that was the first field goal at Putnam Stadium. Hill was a straight-on kicker who tied the top of his cleat back to make a good kicking surface.
Here’s another inside story: The Tomcats didn’t have a kicker in coach Jake Hallum’s first season in 1966 when Hill and John Radjunas were juniors. They talked about it and decided they would sneak into Putnam Stadium and practice during the spring prior to the 1967 season. Whoever would make the first field goal would be the kicker and the other would be the holder.
But when they started to practice, Hill decided he would kick until he made one and settle the issue quicker. When he missed, he told Radjunas he was “bigger and meaner and he was going to get another turn.”
Radjunas was anything but stupid so he “allowed” Hill to have enough mulligans before he eventually made one.
That took hours and Speed Bailey, the Putnam Jr. High School janitor, spotted them on the field and chased them off. He lived in the white house that used to sit just outside the end zone. But the persistent duo kept trying to improve their skills (and increase their chances of having their name in the newspaper) so they kept sneaking into the stadium and Speed was there to shoo them off. He eventually went to Hallum and figured that would be the end of that stunt. But Hallum liked the idea and gave them keys to the stadium and a bag full of footballs.
They did a few more times but with the thrill of sneaking into the stadium gone, so was most of the fun.
Nearly 60 yards later, Hill still remembers making that 24-yard field goal against Stonewall Jackson. He had made his first one in the second game of the season against Boyd County, a 25-yard field goal in Cannonsburg.
It wasn’t the field goal that was most memorable about the Stonewall Jackson game to Hill though. It’s the nightmarish memory of Harry “Sugar Bear” Lyles, the dynamic Stonewall linebacker who was all over Putnam Stadium for 26 tackles.
“I’m an old man and I ain’t never forgot that man,” Hill said. “I’ve never seen anything like him.”
Hill didn’t have any professional kicking instruction except for a conversation with Bubby Payne, a former kicker for Ashland who played at UK years prior. Soccer-style had not arrived in America, so it was a straight-on approach. He ran a shoestring around the back of his shoe and then through his first single clean on the front of the shoe. He then pulled the string as tight as he could to force his ankle to be locked in a better kicking position. Hill did that regularly for kickoffs and many of them reached the goal line.
Hill remembers missing some field goals with line drive kicks that crashed into the crossbar and came right back at him. “I came up short,” he said. “Story of my life.”
Hill’s last field goal came against Covington Catholic the week after the Stonewall Jackson game and it was also at Putnam Stadium.
His most important kick though may have come in a 21-20 victory over McKell at Putnam Stadium. The extra point on the last touchdown provided the winning margin in one of Ashland’s toughest games of the season besides Stonewall Jackson.
Ashland was trailing 20-14 in the fourth quarter when Radjunas famously told Coach Hallum before the game-winning drive to save a timeout so Paul could have time to tie up his shoe. He did and then boomed it through the uprights for the narrow win in what Hill called “the best game we ever won.”
Don Gullett scored three touchdowns and ran for 88 yards in the game for McKell. Hill said his best play was chasing down Gullett and he told Don’s brother, Jack, about it later in life.
“Donnie’s pretty quick but I ran him down before he could score another touchdown that would have beaten us,” he told Jack.
“You couldn’t run him down!’ Jack shot back.
“I could if I had the angle and I did.”
Paul’s nephew, Clayton Hill, was a soccer star for the Tomcats and the kicker for the 1990 state champions. He didn’t have a field goal, but he did make 42 extra points. That Tomcat team went for it on most fourth downs.
The kicker with the most field goals, at least through the 2020 season, was Preston Freeman with nine over two years and seven in the 2006 season. He was another outstanding soccer player.
Jim Ward in 1965 used the dropkick to kick a dozen extra points but no field goals.
The first field goal in Ashland Tomcat history came in 1919 but I don’t have a name. The next came in 1923 by Wilfrey Wolfrey, who booted two including one that provided a 3-0 road victory over Millersburg Military Institute. He also made one at Armco Field in a 51-0 win over Paris.
