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.
ASHLAND, Ky. (KT) – Bill Grimes doesn’t remember everything about his Ashland Tomcat football career in 1961 and 1962.
But there is one collision he will never forget.
Grimes was a junior in 1961, and things weren’t going well on the second Friday in October when Ironton came to town. Ashland was 1-5 and hadn’t scored since the second week of the season, a 12-6 loss to Point Pleasant, W.Va. The Tomcats had opened the year with a 7-0 victory over Catlettsburg.
On the opening kickoff at Putnam Stadium, the stocky, 181-pound Grimes sprinted toward Ironton’s Coy Bacon.
They didn’t collide. They crashed.
Grimes went flying backward through the air and landed hard on the turf. He collected himself and walked off the field.
Bill Grimes during his senior year at Ashland in 1962
Sixty-five years later, he can still feel it.
Bacon did all right for himself, too. He was selected to three Pro Bowls during a 14-year NFL career and recorded 130.5 sacks before sacks became an official statistic.
That was the stone wall Grimes ran into – and wished he hadn’t.
“I wasn’t afraid of anything, even Coy Bacon,” Grimes said. “He hit me and I’m flying in the air going backwards. It was on the film. The coaches said, ‘Grimes goes in the air and then gets back up ready to play.’ They were trying to make me feel better. Coy was a class guy, I really liked him. I kept thinking this guy is 23, 24 years old. He knocked the crap out of me. I sure do remember that.”
Grimes, now 81 and living in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., won’t soon forget it.
Ashland lost that night, 13-0, for its fourth consecutive shutout. The Tomcats lost to Fort Thomas Highlands the following week, 34-12, falling to 1-6 before winning their final three games to finish 4-6.
It was a sign of things to come.
“We started meshing and it carried over,” Grimes said.
It certainly did.
The 1962 Tomcats went 8-1-1, with the only blemish a 28-0 loss to Highlands. That loss kept them out of the state playoffs, which had begun in 1959.
Ashland’s first postseason appearance came in 1966, when Highlands again ended the Tomcats’ season with a 27-12 victory. A year later, Ashland returned to the playoffs and won the Class AA state championship.
The 1962 season deserves more attention than it gets.
Grimes was a versatile player who ran the ball, kicked and played linebacker. He averaged 7 yards a carry but had only 30 attempts for 212 yards. Chip Miller led the ground game with 566 yards and 10 touchdowns.
And talented sophomore Tom Ferguson started at quarterback during an era when sophomores seldom dressed. Only five did that season.
Ferguson started all three seasons before signing with the University of Kentucky. He played quarterback on the freshman team before moving to linebacker, where he started three years for the Wildcats.
From Alabama to Ashland
Grimes moved to Ashland from Alabama before his sophomore year. His father was a career Army man, and the family was supposed to move to Berlin. But the Berlin crisis changed those plans, and his father decided to retire.
His mother, an Ashland native, insisted they return to her hometown.
Grimes loved football, and his mother gave him some simple advice.
If you want to play football, go to Ashland and become a Tomcat.
He moved in with his aunt and started school. His parents arrived two months later and bought a home on Woodlawn Avenue.
He attended the old high school on Lexington Avenue, but the construction of Paul G. Blazer High School was already changing the landscape. Grimes called the new campus a showplace and believes it helped bring the team together.
His cousin, Bob Patterson, played in the band and introduced Grimes to the Cincinnati Reds. Patterson also taught him a lesson Grimes still lives by:
Once you’re a Tomcat, you’re always a Tomcat.
Basketball was another story.
“I had no idea why these guys were running around in shorts,” Grimes said. “Bear (Bryant) wouldn’t let me go anywhere in shorts. It was a real awakening.”
During Grimes’ junior year, the 1961 Tomcats basketball team produced one of the greatest seasons in Sweet Sixteen history, going 36-1 behind Harold Sargent, Gene Smith and Larry Conley.
The next year, Ashland nearly repeated as state champion, losing to St. Xavier, 62-58, in the finals.
But Grimes’ game was football.
He had thick thighs and ran with authority, even though he didn’t get a lot of carries. He attempted six passes – all incompletions – and was an accurate placekicker, making 21 extra points. “I did whatever I could to get on the field,” he said.
The Tomcats opened the 1962 season with four straight victories, including a 7-6 win over Huntington High.
That one mattered.
It matched coaching brothers Rex Miller of Ashland and Claude Miller of Huntington. Grimes put the Tomcats ahead 7-0 before the Pony Express scored. Huntington’s chance to tie was denied when Eddie Radjunas broke through the line and blocked the kick.
John Stafford, Tim Brown, Fred Cooper, Vic McGuire and Radjunas were honorable mention All-State selections. Nick Jordan, a junior who joined the team late that season, would become a first-team All-State defensive tackle in 1963.
Grimes still remembers the teammates who became lifelong friends: David Alban, J.B. Conley, Bob Yancey, George Branham, Bob Reynolds, Charlie Jordan, Radjunas and Larry Fairchild.
“I loved that team,” he said. “Those guys took me in as a sophomore and we grew to like each other. All of them grew up in Ashland. They knew their people. But they took care of me. We had confidence in our coaching staff. They called me The Bull believe it or not. The funny thing, Bob Yancey once told me, ‘Coach should have put you in more.’”
Ashland’s 1962 football team that had an 8-1-1 record and included several well-known Tomcats.
Ashland tied Hazard 20-20, and Grimes played a role in preserving the tie. He missed the extra point after the second touchdown but made the kick after the third score to keep the Tomcats undefeated.
He remembered playing at Hazard the previous season, too. The field was uneven, he said, and coal miners watched from the sidelines covered in coal dust.
“All you could see were their white teeth and eyes,” he said.
After beating Ironton 25-6 in his ssenior season, Ashland took its 5-0-1 record to Highlands with little hope of winning, Grimes said.
“A lot of the guys were just trying to get the game over with,” he said. “We knew we were going to get beat; just don’t get beat too bad. On the way home the coaches said you guys are too happy. The idea was, we got through it, we didn’t get killed (28-0). We still had three at the end (of the season).”
The Tomcats regrouped.
They won their final three games by a combined 102-25 to finish 8-1-1, their best record since the 10-0-1 team of 1958.
Grimes’ best game came in a 34-6 rout of Russell. He rushed for 67 yards.
“They turned me loose,” he said, chuckling. “I carried a guy about 30 yards on my back before somebody hit me and knocked me down. That’s where the name Bull came from.”
Once a Tomcat
Grimes moved to South Carolina in 2014, where he eventually ran into a player from Stonewall Jackson, which Ashland had defeated 27-20 in 1962.
The man talked about how Stonewall Jackson had won the game.
Grimes didn’t correct him.
Instead, the conversation led Grimes and his wife to a church where they remain members.
Grimes’ life after Ashland was as remarkable as his football career.
He joined the Army out of high school and served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, eventually rising to captain. He retired from the military after 32 years.
At one point, he served a midnight shift guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, an honored reserved for the elite soldier.
He later earned a law degree and spent 32 years as a prosecutor in Indiana.
He said 50 men he sent to prison are now Facebook friends with him.
Grimes and his wife Valorie will celebrate 39 years of marriage in December. He has three adult sons from a previous marriage, all of whom played high school football. His middle son, Matthew, played at Centre College.
And there is one more thing worth knowing about Bill Grimes.
He coached youth league football for 20 years.
A Tomcat football player. A Vietnam veteran. A prosecutor who put bad guys away. A youth football coach.
Not a bad legacy.
And perhaps not a bad legacy for a Tomcat team that deserves a little more love than it has received over the years.
Grimes certainly hasn’t forgotten it.
“Once a Tomcat, always a Tomcat,” he said. “I loved it!”
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.
