Coach Homer Rice's State Championship Reunion Medals

These medallions were struck to commemorate the three reunions held by Coach Homer Rice for his Kentucky State Championship football teams of 1957, 1960 and 1961. Each reunion was a luncheon in Fort Thomas intended to reflect and celebrate these state championship teams. Players, coaches, cheerleaders, and others were invited, and one of these medallions was presented to each attendee. These gatherings, entirely sponsored by Coach Rice and held over fifty years after the games they celebrated, were a great example of his lasting affection for, and remembrance of, his players, coaches, and others around him. His firm belief in excellence and high standards was fully matched by his qualities as a caring and generous human being, and both qualities were prized by those around him. At one of these reunions, his players presented him with a trophy with this inscription: 

Your Dedication, Inspiration 

 and Leadership 

Shaped our Lives. 

You Made Us Better Men.  

Homer Rice is a Highlands legend, both because of his playing and coaching years at Highlands and his incredible subsequent career as coach, teacher, athletic director, author and inspirational leader at the high school, college, and professional levels. It is impossible to cover even a fraction of his accomplishments. For example, although his coaching and athletic management achievements are well known, experiences like his Golden Gloves Championship and playing the trumpet in Jimmy Dorsey’s band are not and are too numerous to describe. But in all these endeavors, and to this day, Coach Rice recognizes Highlands as his foundation and the place from which his extraordinary career was launched.  

Born in 1927, Coach Rice lived in Fort Thomas during his formative years, playing quarterback for the Highlands team that took the Kentucky State Championship in 1943. Shortly thereafter, he joined the United States Navy, surviving malaria and seeing action in the South Pacific, dodging enemy fire while driving supply trucks. The Navy noticed his athletic ability, so he played baseball for the Navy as a catcher. He tells the story of catching pitches from Bob Feller (who some say threw the fastest fastball in baseball history) and having to fit his catcher’s mitt with extra padding. After graduating from Highlands, he played for a Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm team until he realized, he says, that a fellow named Roy Campanella stood in his way of making it to the Dodgers in the big leagues.  

About this time, Rice says he began to realize that his real passion was football. His first coaching/teaching job, in 1951, was in Wartburg, Tennessee. He talks of having barely enough players to field a team at Wartburg, and besides that, there was no equipment, since Wartburg had not previously had a team at all. He heard that a nearby state prison had had a football team at one time, so he worked out a deal with the warden to borrow equipment in return for coaching the prison team. Both Wartburg Central High and the prison team went undefeated that year.  

In 1953, Coach Rice was recruited to Spring Hill, Tennessee, with comparable success, but in 1954, he received a call from his Highlands coach, Ewell “Judge” Waddell, asking that he return to Fort Thomas. He says, “I was practically there before he finished the sentence.” Coach Rice, in his seven years at Highlands, won three Kentucky State Championships. He, his 1957 team and many of his individual players are in the Highlands Athletic Hall of Fame. It is fair to say that the Rice years were the beginning of the Highlands Dynasty in football.

After Highlands, Rice coached at Kentucky, Cincinnati, Oklahoma, and Rice Universities, and was head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals in 1978 and 1979.  

In 1980, Coach Rice was asked to be athletic director at Georgia Tech. At that time, the Tech athletic program was distressed to say the least, but the opportunity fulfilled, according to Coach Rice, a lifetime dream of heading up an entire athletic department at a major university. And it was at Georgia Tech that he made his most memorable national mark, taking Georgia Tech athletics from obscurity (even its football team was weak as compared to prior years) to one of the premier programs in the nation.  

As a high school coach, Rice won nine Coach of the Year awards. As a college coach, he coached four All-American quarterbacks, and was inventor of the famous triple-option offense. He has published several books and has left a permanent legacy as an athletic educator, including his Student-Athlete Total Person Program. First used at Georgia Tech, this program is now helping young men and women at more than 200 other colleges and universities. On the Georgia Tech campus, on a revered walkway known as Calloway Plaza, there are three life-size statues: Bobby Dodd, John Heisman (of trophy fame) and Homer Rice. Such is his standing in the world of sports. 

In an interview in 2023, he affirmed that a big part of his heart would always be at Highlands. He has been named an Alumnus of the Year is the founder of the Ewell “Judge” Waddell Endowed Scholarship, which has awarded over $100,000 in scholarships to Highlands seniors.   Coach Rice lived a full life until the age of 97, when he passed June 10, 2024.  

His funeral program states that when he leaves this world he hopes to be remembered Not by how many games his teams won nor by his honored received.  Instead, his higher purpose in life was to be a giving person as well as using his life to help others become positive leaders.  Coach was truly a legendary Bluebird who fulfilled his wishes of producing positive leaders and givers.