Historian recounts ‘best year ever’ for GRC sports

By Matt Cizek | Winchester Sun

Over the last few years, Mike “Bear” Rogers has served as the head coach of the girls’ golf team at George Rogers Clark High School.

However, his alle­giance to the school goes back decades as an alum, fan, sta­tis­tics keep­er, his­to­ri­an, and more.

Recounting the 2025–26 school year with GRC ath­let­ics, Rogers made his opin­ions clear.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly the top,” he said, not­ing that he’s been fol­low­ing Clark County sports going back to the 1960’s. “From all the data I have and all the stuff that I know, this is the best year ever.”

GRC’s recent run of suc­cess has been no secret to locals, or even state high school fans for that matter.

A long­time pow­er­house in Kentucky high school bas­ket­ball, the teams broke through in his­tor­i­cal fash­ion in March.

While the Lady Cards won the 2026 KHSAA® Sweet 16 state cham­pi­onship in girls’ bas­ket­ball by defeat­ing Assumption 48–43, aveng­ing their only in-state loss of the reg­u­lar sea­son, the Cards over­came the odds and defeat­ed #1 St. X 58–50 in over­time to cap­ture the state title in boys’ basketball.

It was the first time since 1928 that a sin­gle school won state titles in both boys’ and girls’ bas­ket­ball, a feat made all the more remark­able giv­en that Kentucky is one of just two schools to have only a sin­gle state cham­pi­on in the sport.

The school also fin­ished as the 10^th Region run­ners-up in girls’ vol­ley­ball, the fur­thest it’s gone in school history.

Since cur­rent head coach Kainan Hudson inher­it­ed a Lady Cards’ squad that went win­less in 2020, he has also led the team to three 40^th District cham­pi­onships in five seasons.

The foot­ball team, exit­ing in the sec­ond round of the Class 6A play­offs for the sec­ond straight sea­son, won its most dom­i­nant play­off game in years, defeat­ing Tates Creek 33–6 in the first round in Lexington.

Before bow­ing out to even­tu­al 10^th Region cham­pi­on Campbell County in the tour­na­ment semi­fi­nals, GRC’s base­ball team, under the direc­tion of return­ing head coach Chris Varney and despite strong turnover, upset then-defend­ing 10^th Region cham­pi­on and heav­i­ly favored Harrison County dur­ing the 10^th Region tournament.

In what might have been the biggest sur­prise, the GRC soft­ball team advanced to the Final Four of the state tour­na­ment with vic­to­ries over 16^th Region cham­pi­on Ashland Blazer and 2^nd Region champ after win­ning two games via walkoff hits, the last com­ing on a ral­ly when down to their final out dur­ing a 10^th Region quar­ter­fi­nal match against Pendleton County.

Accomplishments in a num­ber of oth­er sports, such as wrestling and ten­nis, were also worthwhile.

For Rogers, a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive helps explain how the school got here.

“We’re rid­ing this momen­tum that we have. The momen­tum start­ed with the build­ing of the new school. That was, to me, the turn­ing point for our com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

The facil­i­ties at the new and cur­rent George Rogers Clark High School on Athens-Boonesboro Road also had a sig­nif­i­cant impact.

“We were able to deliv­er and build a total ath­let­ic com­plex, which the com­mu­ni­ty want­ed,” he said, with the com­plex includ­ing GRC Arena, Cardinal Stadium, and more.

In the inter­im between the build­ing of the new school and ath­let­ic facil­i­ties, Rogers said he encour­aged patience.

“Everybody was sort of in an uproar that we didn’t have these…(but) you have got to take care of edu­ca­tion first,” he said. “That’s the pri­ma­ry objec­tive of any school system…athletics is impor­tant, but the aca­d­e­m­ic part you’ve got to show your community.”

Recognizing for­mer CCPS Superintendent Paul Christy, in par­tic­u­lar, Rogers not­ed that the devel­op­ment of the ath­let­ic facil­i­ties was beneficial.

“We were pro­ject­ed to lose enroll­ment, but we’ve gained every year since we built the ath­let­ic complex…it got us bet­ter kids in the sys­tem not just aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but ath­let­i­cal­ly,” he said. “Kids are want­i­ng to come here because of our pro­gram and our facil­i­ties, and that momen­tum is what we’re rid­ing right now.”

Rogers not­ed that the hir­ing of Terry Yeast, cur­rent GRC Athletic Director, in the sum­mer of 2023 was effective.

“He’s done things that I don’t think ever hap­pened here before,” he said. “We’ve had a cou­ple meet­ings already where all the coach­es and all the admin­is­tra­tors are there just try­ing to be orga­nized, try­ing to share dif­fer­ent things of what (is) expect­ed of us and things like that.”

Speaking of admin­is­tra­tion, Rogers said that cur­rent Clark County Public Schools Superintendent Dustin Howard, also a Clark County native, has been a spear­head­ing fig­ure in many ways.

“I think it starts at the top. I think he has had the lead­er­ship and labeled the expec­ta­tions,” Rogers said. “He’s the one that has the vision, and he is so pas­sion­ate about our kids…he’s been a tremen­dous leader.”

In the imme­di­ate future, GRC fans have plen­ty of new faces to expect with three new head coach­es for fall sports: Dane Damron (foot­ball), Marc Miller (girls soc­cer), and Renny Ross (boys soccer).

In par­tic­u­lar, Rogers notes that he hopes foot­ball can return to the lev­el of suc­cess seen in the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s, anoth­er his­tor­i­cal­ly good time for GRC sports, per­haps most remem­bered for the 1991 state cham­pi­onship in football.

He also not­ed that, as a girls’ golf coach, he hopes oth­ers will ral­ly around teams like his.

“I try to get out and watch all the oth­er sports…we (need) every­body pulling for every­body,” he said.

Such crowd and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port was evi­dent, he not­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the team’s bas­ket­ball and soft­ball runs, which includ­ed free bus fare.

The Lady Cards’ golf team begins its sea­son on Wednesday, July 22, at the Kentucky Golf Coaches Association (KGCA) Invitational at Lakeside Golf Course in Lexington.

GRC will host a tour­na­ment at the Winchester Country Club, locat­ed at 410 Boone Avenue, on Monday, July 27, begin­ning at 8:30 a.m.

While hop­ing to keep the momen­tum going strong, Rogers, with all his years of cov­er­ing sports, hopes that oth­ers will have per­spec­tive, too.

“This is not nor­mal times…I try to tell peo­ple it’s not always going to be this way…we (have) had some lulls,” he said. “This lit­tle stretch has been the most successful.”