The history of sports in Northern Kentucky goes back a long way. A very long way. Decades. Centuries.
We know you’ve seen these lists before, but this is a different and unique way of presenting our “50 sports icons in Northern Kentucky” as we’ll provide you one per day over the next 50 days.
Hall of Fames are everywhere in NKY, the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame, High School Athletic Directors Hall of Fame, NKU, Thomas More and local high schools all have something to recognize their past.
We’ll preface this series by saying this, some of you may disagree with who should or shouldn’t be in the top 50 and that’s fine. Plenty are in the Hall of Very Good, but we feel these 50 are the one’s who stuck out to us.
A weekly roundup of NKY sports headlines right to you every Monday at noon.
Sports Editor Evan Dennison spoke and conferred with several local NKY sports history buffs to get their opinions and lists of their own and who should be “locks” for the 50 sports icons. We compiled each list and came up with the 50 of our own (maybe cheated a little by putting families in as one) to present over the next 50 days.
Hope you enjoy as summer time rolls on!
The 36th of the 50 sports icons is Pat Scott, a girl with a childhood baseball dream that turned into a reality.
PAT SCOTT
Who said girls can’t play baseball? Pat Scott did and thrived in doing so. Scott was a member of the women’s baseball league that inspired the movie “A League of Their Own”, where she helped with advising in the making of the movie.
Scott was born in Covington and grew up in Burlington on a farm that included a baseball field. That’s where she picked up the game when a minor league team came to practice on the field and taught her the game.
After playing softball in high school at St. Henry, Scott tried out for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League at Wrigley Field. She made the cut and was signed by the Springfield Sallies. In four seasons in the AAGPBL, Scott went 48-26 with a 2.46 ERA, making three postseason appearances for the Fort Wayne Daisies from 1951-53.
A woman with many talents, Scott then went to the University of Kentucky to study zoology and played for the women’s basketball team. She would earn two degrees in zoology and medicine, later working as a medical technologist in the Cincinnati area for 32 years.
When she retired, Scott moved to Walton and was still involved in softball. The Walton Community Park baseball field was later named for her as Pat Scott Field.
Scott talents on the baseball field later had her honored as part of the Women in Baseball (Diamond Dreams) exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., and her native Northern Kentucky has honored her in several ways.
She was inducted in the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington hosted an exhibit about her baseball career in conjunction with the All-Star Game at Great American Ball Park.
See the 50 sports icons on a day-to-day basis over the next 50 days
— Day 1:
Dave Cowens
— Day 2:
Shaun Alexander
— Day 3:
Homer Rice
— Day 4:
Dicky Beal
— Day 5:
Jared Lorenzen
— Day 6:
Jim Bunning
— Day 7:
Tom Ellis
— Day 8:
Nate Dusing
— Day 9:
Jim Connor
— Day 10:
Steve Cauthen
— Day 11:
Irv Goode
— Day 12:
Stan Steidel
— Day 13:
Kenney Shields
— Day 14:
David Justice
— Day 15:
Morgan Hentz
— Day 16:
Eddie Arcaro
— Day 17:
Nancy Winstel
— Day 18:
Steve Flesch
— Day 19:
Donna Murphy
— Day 20:
Randy Marsh
— Day 21:
Mike Yeagle
— Day 22:
Derrick Barnes
— Day 23:
Dale Mueller
— Day 24:
Dave Faust
— Day 25:
Kirsten Allen
— Day 26:
The Oldendick family
— Day 27:
Martin “Mote” Hils
— Day 28:
Nell Fookes
— Day 29:
Owen Hauck
— Day 30:
Becky Ruehl
— Day 31:
Tom Thacker
— Day 32:
Sydney Moss
— Day 33:
Bob Schneider
— Day 34:
The Walz family
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