Jim Mashek

BOWLING GREEN LOOKS FOR RETURN TO KROGER FIELD; SOUTH WARREN GAINED HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE WITH HARD-FOUGHT, 28-24 VICTORY IN OCTOBER

It’s become one of the premier rivalries in Kentucky high school football, and on Friday night, it takes center stage at South Warren High School.

Intrigue? You bet.

Intensity? Count on it.

Drama?

Well, consider the track record …

Bowling Green High School, the defending KHSAA Class 5A state champion, makes the short trip down Nashville Road to tangle with South Warren (12-1) in the 5A semifinals, with the winner to face either unbeaten Cooper High School (13-0) or Highlands (11-2) in next week’s championship game at the University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field in Lexington.

The Purples (11-2 overall) and Spartans have tangled five times in the KHSAA Class 5A state playoffs since South Warren moved up from the Class 4A ranks for the 2017-18 school year. Bowling Green has won three of those games, but South Warren earned the home-field advantage for Friday night’s showdown with a hard-fought, 28-24 victory over the Purples on October 18 at the BGHS Stadium.

“That game does feel like it was forever ago,” South coach Brandon Smith said.

Both teams had to win their way to get here, and neither squad has really been challenged in advancing through the first three rounds of the playoffs. Bowling Green’s Deuce Bailey threw six touchdown passes last week, sending the Purples past Louisville’s Atherton High School, 44-20, while South Warren took care of business in a 42-7 rout of North Bullitt.

“We’ve been in the same district for seven years,” BGHS coach Mark Spader said, “and in five of those years, we’ve met in the playoffs … The emotions are going to be very high, but we do feel like there’s a mutual respect between the two programs.

“For some reason, crazy things tend to happen when we play each other. I’m glad we’re going to keep playing each other (when South Warren moves up to the KHSAA’s Class 6A ranks for the 2025-26 school year), but it’ll be a little bit different … We want our guys to embrace the moment, and concentrate on the execution.”

South Warren has won eight straight games since dropping a 35-7 decision to Louisville’s DuPont Manual High School on September 20 at Spartans Stadium. Senior quarterback Bryce Button, an Eastern Michigan University commit, has given the Spartans direction, guts and leadership in his final year of college football, much like Deuce Bailey, the senior BGHS quarterback who has cast his lot with future Conference USA member Missouri State.

“To win at any level, you have to have a quarterback, and both of us do,” Spader said.

Bailey became the Purples’ starter four games into the 2021 season, when South Warren quarterback Caden Veltkamp — now calling the signals for his hometown school, Western Kentucky University — was leading the Spartans to their state championship since opening their doors in 2010. Button followed suit the next year, when South Warren slugged their way through a .500 season, bowing out of the KHSAA Class 5A playoffs with a 34-0 loss to the Purples.

That has been the exception, rather than the rule, when these teams collide.

South Warren needed a monster game from senior tight end/linebacker Colton Veltkamp, a Georgia Southern commit, to slip past the Purples in October. Veltkamp caught the game-winning touchdown pass from Button, a 31-yard strike with four minutes, six seconds left, while also delivering several big plays on the defensive side of the ball.

Colton Veltkamp, Button and some of the other South Warren seniors were on the sideline in 2021, when Caden Veltkamp and the Spartans defeated Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School, 38-26, in the KHSAA Class 5A state championship game.

Deuce Bailey and the Purples made it to the 5A title game the next year, falling to Douglass, 28-7, before returning last season and whipping Cooper, 28-14, for the eighth state championship in BGHS history. Bowling Green and South Warren have been among the state’s top-ranked teams, regardless of classification, for nearly the entire season, but none of that will matter when they tee it up in the chill of the air on Nashville Road on Friday night.

“I stopped trying to predict these kind of games a long time ago,” South coach Brandon Smith said.

BGHS coach Mark Spader said penalties, turnovers and trick plays often come into play when the Purples square off with the Spartans. In 2023, Bowling Green needed a “hook-and-lateral” play, with BGHS receiver Trevy Barber catching a Bailey pass before his lateral to teammate Trey Graham resulted in the winning points with just 14 seconds left in a 36-29 victory at South.

The rematch never happened, though, after Owensboro High School derailed the Spartans, 53-22, at Rash Stadium in Owensboro.

In 2020, when Spader won his first KHSAA state championship as a head coach, Bowling Green needed a blocked punt and subsequent touchdown from special-teams ace Tucker Strode to fuel the Purples’ dramatic 41-24 victory in second-round play. Bowling Green’s defense took the initiative from there, and the Purples stopped Owensboro, 17-7, in the state championship game.

“These games can be so crazy,” Spader said. “Usually, there’s more turnovers than you’d normally expect. The emotions are high. We’ve had a great week of practice, and I love how are kids are handling it. Both teams want to win a state championship, and only one team can come away with that chance.

“Put it this way, I think the fans are gonna get their money’s worth.”

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.