Jim Mashek

BOWLING GREEN MAKING ITS THIRD CONSECUTIVE APPEARANCE IN CHAMPIONSHIP GAME; PURPLES LOOK FOR FIRST BACK-TO-BACK TITLES SINCE 2016, ’17

LEXINGTON –The University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field is the promised land for high school football in the Commonwealth, and Bowling Green High School has found the path here for the third consecutive season.

It’s quite the disparity, winning the ultimate championship in the massive stadium — built for the Wildcats and SEC football — and defeat, to come this close to taking it all and leaving with the runner-up trophy.

The tradition-rich Purples have experienced both sides of the fence, in the last two years.

In 2022, Deuce Bailey’s second year as the BGHS starting quarterback, the Purples caught fire in the postseason, outscoring their first four playoff opponents by an average of 35 points per game. In the second week of the playoffs, Bowling Green completed a two-game sweep of archrival South Warren, 34-0.

The Spartans were the defending KHSAA Class 5A state champions that year, but they struggled through a 6-6 season before returning to form in the last two seasons.

So when they got to the championship game two years ago, facing Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School, they dropped a 28-7 decision. That only fueled a state championship run in 2023 — the eighth in BGHS history — while creating massive expectations for the 2024 season.

Bowling Green won the KHSAA Class 5A title game last year, outlasting Cooper High School, 28-14, on a cold, rainy night at Kroger Field. The Purples returned Bailey, the Missouri State signee, and much of their defense for 2024, and they’ve answered the bell in clutch situations several times over the course of the last three months.

Particularly last week’s hard-fought, 31-28 victory over South Warren, the triumph that sends the Purples (12-2 overall) into Saturday night’s KHSAA Class 5A title game against the unbeaten Cooper Jaguars (14-0).

Cooper has outscored its 14 opponents, including Ryle High School, a KHSAA Class 6A finalist, by a staggering count of 644-215. Junior quarterback Cam O’Hara is starting for the second season for the Jaguars, and he’s thrown for 3,355 yards and 49 touchdowns — with just THREE interceptions.

All of which means Cooper is the favorite, which seventh-year BGHS coach Mark Spader was quick to embrace. In the annual poll of the Courier-Journal’s high school sportswriters, all four writers picked Cooper to win the 5A game. The first day of the KHSAA’s Championship Weekend featured cold and windy conditions, but Spader didn’t seem too concerned about that earlier in the week.

“Yes, we are embracing the role of the underdog,” Spader said via text message on Wednesday. “Saturday in Lexington is looking like sunny and the upper 40s during the day, and the upper 30s for our game time.

“That’s warmer than the conditions we’ve practiced in, this week.”

Spader is thrilled that the Purples could get back to Kroger Field — “that’s quite a feat for us,” he said — and he believes his squad started to hit stride after its 28-24 loss to South Warren on October 18. Bowling Green has won six straight since that defeat.

“Our team has done a great job of focusing on each opponent, every week, and approaching each game with a quiet confidence. We’re handling the cold, and putting in good work this week.

“I trust our seniors to lead us through this last game.”

By the same token, Cooper coach Randy Borchers can take a similar approach, given the results the Jaguars have put up in a dominant season. Cooper’s Isaiah Johnson has caught 59 passes for 1,209 yards and 23 touchdowns, and teammates Austin Alexander and Jaiden Combs have combined for another 20 TD receptions.

On the ground, the Jaguars count on junior running back Keagan Maher, who has rushed for 1,433 yards and 22 touchdowns.

“We knew we had the nucleus, had some big receivers, you get that at the high school level and it’s a big benefit for you,” Borchers told Northern Kentucky Metro. “We knew the QB (Cooper junior Cam O’Hara) coming in was something special. Had a couple of good running backs. Just a good group of kids that worked extremely hard and had great leadership.”

O’Hara will have to share the spotlight with Bowling Green’s Deuce Bailey, the school’s all-time passing leader in virtually every category. Bailey and BGHS defensive back Grayson Newman were chosen as permanent team captains during the summer, and they’ve both played critical roles in the Purples’ success.

“I’ll go with our guy (Bailey) any day, but Cooper’s O’Hara is as good as any quarterback we’ve faced this season,” Spader said. “They’re a very confident team with an explosive offense, and a defense with a D-I talent (Austin Alexander) that swarms to the football and takes advantage of opportunities to make plays on the ball.”

Either way, the Purples will close a chapter in their storied history when Deuce Bailey moves on to college football.