KPA, All ‘A’ and Groundhog Day

It has been quite the week, and while I have spent much of it on the road, I wanted to weigh in here with just a few random observations…

First, I won’t go into any great detail, as both of the other columns on the page this week discuss it as well, but I am happy to once again be a part of the first-place winner in General Excellence for large weekly newspapers in the state of Kentucky. The staff of the News Journal brought home the award from last week’s 2023 Kentucky Press Association annual convention, which was held in Bowling Green, and all of us here were obviously thrilled with the outcome.

Again, Mark and Don both discuss this in their columns, so I will direct you to them to get more thoughts on this year’s KPA awards, but I did want to also say “thank you” to our readers and our advertisers for making this honor possible. Without you all, we simply could not do what we do, so this is your award just as much as it is ours as far as I’m concerned.

I hope that many of you out there picked up a copy of last week’s paper and checked out the special coverage that we dedicated to the 2024 All “A” Classic basketball state tournaments, which took place between Jan. 24-28 at the Corbin Arena. As I said at the beginning of this column, I have spent much of the last several days on the road, so I was not able to make it up to the Arena as much as I would have liked last week, but when I was there I saw decent-sized crowds and a lot of excitement about this event being held in Corbin this year.

Living in the south Corbin area, I definitely noticed the heavier traffic off of I-75 Exit 25, and it seemed like the businesses there all stayed pretty busy while the tournaments were in progress. The restaurants, especially, seemed to see a rather large uptick in guests, which is great.

I also heard that many hotels in the area were booked up, which was to be expected considering the large number of teams from all over the state that made their way here thanks to the All “A” Classic. Hopefully, local stores, entertainment spots and tourist destinations also saw an increase in foot traffic as well. As I said in my column last week, this event truly was a golden opportunity for our community.

Congratulations to the 2024 girls All “A” state champions, Covington Holy Cross, who defeated Pikeville in a thriller on Sunday, 56-55.

Also, congrats to Newport, who won the boys’ All “A” state title with a 69-62 victory over defending champs Evangel Christian in overtime.

Finally, I noticed when looking at my calendar for the week that this Friday is apparently Groundhog Day. I typically don’t pay much attention to this annual event, as it seems to rarely ever go the way that it’s supposed to, but this year I am sincerely hoping that spring weather gets here sooner rather than later.

The recent winter weather that we experienced made life pretty miserable, in my opinion, and I really don’t want to see a repeat of that in the month of February. Fingers crossed that will not be the case, and that warmer temperatures will be on the way.

I’m ready for more daylight, and being able to work around the house in shorts and a t-shirt again. Also, I’m chomping at the bit to get some dates on the calendar for another camping trip. It’s been too long!