Just call them the Ironton “Flying” Tigers.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association has passed a bylaw that allows students at a private school to participate in football at a public school while remaining at their school.

In other words, since Ironton St. Joseph doesn’t have football and it is a private school, a male student who wants to play that sport may play at Ironton High School and continue attending St. Joseph.

The key here is the student at the private school must play at the public high school in the district in which they reside.

St. Joseph’s school district is Lawrence County. So if a student attending St. Joseph who lives in Ironton, they must play at Ironton. If the student attends St. Joseph and lives in Coal Grove, they would have to play at Coal Grove.

Once football season has ended, the student at the private school would return to playing sports at their school.

Ironton duo at Walsh

Former Ironton All-Ohio basketball standouts Zac Carter and Trey Fletcher are earning playing time as freshmen for the Walsh University Cavaliers.

Carter scored 11 points in an exhibition game at Ohio State while Fletcher had five points and two rebounds.

In the regular season opener against Houghton, Carter had eight points while Fletcher had 13 points and three rebounds. The Cavaliers then routed Wilberforce 112-68 as Carter had nine points and six assists and Fletcher pumped in 18 points and grabbed seven rebounds.

Walsh plays at Renesselar, Indiana, Saturday. Fans can listen to the game on the internet on radio station WNPQ.

Cross country success

Former Ironton cross country runner Dustin Moritz turned in a strong showing at the Mid-South Conference meet. The Rio Grande University junior runner had a 27:59 time to place 20th overall in the 8K race and was third best for the RedStorm.

Another former Fighting Tiger cross country standout Gary Monroe had back-to-back impressive performances.

The Morehead State junior was 17th in the Ohio Valley Conference meet with a 25:37.788 time as the Eagles finished third, the highest team finish for MSU since 2008.

Monroe followed that outing with and even better effort in the 10K Division I NCAA Regional meet.

Morehead’s Zachariah Elliott broke a 12-year old school record with a 30:37.6 time. Monroe and Jesse Moreno also broke the old record as well. Moreno ran a 31:00.02 time and Monroe was right behind at 31:03.9.

The old record was 31:05 set by Paul Gilum.

The Eagles were 14th out of 35 times, the high regional finish in school history.

Lewis on the loose

Patrick Lewis — who was All-Ohio last year at Ironton — earned some playing time in his freshman season for Marietta College.

The 5-foot-10, 190-pound Lewis ran 58 times for 231 yards or a 4.0 yards per carry average. He played behind junior Tim Conner.

Robbie Webb — another former Ironton All-Ohio player — completed his third season as a starter for Kentucky Christian University.

The 6-foot-4, 290-pound Webb helped the Knights to a 3-8 record during his junior year.

Prayer before games

It seems that the American Civil Liberties Union logged a protest with Raceland High School to prevent a pre-game prayer prior to the Ironton game.

Despite the protest by the ACLU — a.k.a. American Communists Lawyers Union — the public address announcer told the fans they could have “a moment of reflection.”

To the credit of the fans on both sides, they began reciting the Our Father.

Evidently, it’s wrong to infringe on the rights of those who might be offended by prayer even though they aren’t forced to say anything, but it’s OK to infringe on the rights of those who want to pray.

The argument claims school property belongs to the public and there is a separation of church and state. The separation of church and state was created to protect the church. Remember, school property is owned by the public and the majority rules.

Except in the eyes of the ACLU.

Tribute to Andy Gagai

Last week, Andy Gagai died at the age of 84. A lot of his friends remember his as an All-Ohio football player. The younger people know his four sons — George, Andy, John and David – who were all good athletes. John, of course, is still making headlines for his golfing exploits.

But the thing I will remember as his legacy is how he gave his sons their faith in God and taught them to be good men. He was a very devout man. Unless he was sick, he and his wife, June, were at church every morning for 8 a.m. Mass.

God judges people on how they lived and how they treated other people, not on their possessions or what level of success they reached in their jobs.

In that case, Andy Gagai was a very wealthy man.

 

Jim Walker is sports editor of The Ironton Tribune.