Donald Foster
Top Stories
#4 Louisville basketball scandal
This is one of the toughest stories to cover in athletics. It is hard when any school breaks the rules, but this one is disturbing. It started with the stripper sex scandal that rocked Louisville. Former assistant coach is excused of hosting recruits and providing adult entertainment as a way to entice the player to sign with the school. If this wasn’t bad enough Louisville was named in the Adidas Corruption scandal. It is accused that Rick Pitino would use Adidas to funnel money to recruits, it is accused that Pitino gave $100,000 to the family of Brian Bowen who signed with Louisville in a complete surprise to everyone who covers college basketball. As a result Rick Pitino and Tom Jurich, the AD for Louisville, were fired as well as Bowen being dismissed from the program. As of today this is still an ongoing investigation and not only has Louisville in it’s sight but other major programs as well.
#3 Model wins the school’s first ever baseball district championship
Model, a school that opened in 1906 with baseball being a KHSAA sponsored event since 1940, had never won a district championship in baseball. To be fair they are in the 44th district with one of the top baseball programs in the state the Indians of Madison Central. Alex Shapiro took the head coaching job in 2015 and one of his first meetings he said to the team that conditioning would begin in October of that year, the players asked what is conditioning? It took some time, three years under Shapiro and the Patriots finally done something that many thought could never happen, they won the 44th district. It wasn’t easy though, the Indians ranked in the top 10 of the state were knocked off by Madison Southern, Model had it’s hands full with Berea. Model was down to it’s final out trailing 4-1 in the 7th when Berea’s pitcher was pulled due to his pitch count being reached. Model took advantage getting some runners on base and a couple of key hits tying the game at 4 when freshman Cruse Pingleton the #9 hitter in the lineup got the big hit to put Model in the championship game. The Patriots fell behind Madison Southern 2-0 early. In the sixth inning of a tie game Model’s Garrison Gray came up with the bases loaded and he delivered a hit down the line, that was fair by maybe 6 inches, and gave Model the 7-3 win. Model has the fewest boy’s in their school and they showed that sometime it’s not the size of the school but the size of the hearts of the players
