Volleyball coach reaches milestone

Lebanon girls’ volleyball coach Tim Mersch recorded his 300th career coaching win tonight in a victory over Centerville.

Mersch, who is 300-156 in 19 years, is a former coach at Walnut Hills, where he won 280 games. He still teaches health at Walnut Hills, but said he is retiring as an educator at the end of the school year. He plans to continue coaching at Lebanon – a place he’s been the past two seasons.

Among his career highlights are taking the Walnut Hills team to regional appearances in 1993 and 2002.

Highlands remains No. 1

The Highlands girls' soccer team remained No.1 in this week's state coaches' poll that was released today.

The Bluebirds (26 first place votes), have a 6-0-1 record. Newport Central Catholic (5-0-1) and Notre Dame (4-1-3) are fourth and fifth respectively.

• The starting time for the Colerain at Mason football game Thursday, Sept. 13 has been changed to 7:30 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. The game will be televised live on FSN Ohio and the pregame will be shown at 7 p.m. It is the second area game to be shown by the network this season. This Thursday, CHCA plays at Mariemont at 7 p.m. on FSN Ohio.

Lakota East football could make history in 2007.

Lakota East football could make history in 2007 but it won't be the kind of history they will want to remember.

The Thunderhawks travel to Worthington Kilbourne on this Friday to take on a team that currently stands 2-0 with a lot of offensive fire power.

East is 0-2 and have looked bad in both of their losses, having been outscored 66 to 26 in those two games.

Based on the rest of their schedule, with the exception of Mason who is struggling this year but beatable, the Hawks have Colerain, Princeton, Fairfield, Sycamore, Hamilton and Lakota West on their schedule.

They could go 0-10 for the first time in school history.

Teddy Parrella of Bishop Fenwick

Part of being a great athlete or coach starts with being a great human being.

The Bishop Fenwick Falcons lost a great man named Ted Parrella earlier this year and honored him Friday night.

Often we talk about scores, statistics or highlights from a game but in this instance I wanted to recognize Mr. Parrella for leaving such a lasting impression on generations of young men and women who passed through the halls of Fenwick.

There is a great video tribute to him on Fenwick's website http://www.fenwickfalcons.org/

Teddy wore the number 33 in honor of his father who passed away at the age of 33 and left a lasting impression on him.

Ohio Prep Football

It seems like, at least at the national level, all you ever hear about is how great prep football is in Texas and Florida. When are folks going to realize how strong it is in OHIO?

Maybe people will finally take notice after this weekend's Herbstreit Ohio vs. USA Challenge. St. Xavier showed it is one of the top teams in the country after dismantling DeMatha 28-7. Colerain defeated Hoover (Ala.) 20-17 in OT and Elder managed to do something that no other team has been able to do in seven years and 109 games - defeat Independence (Charlotte) 41-34 in OT.

Look for Elder to join St. X and Colerain in most of the major national Top 25 polls in the near future. How many states will be able boast about that?