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Bob White, former sports writer for The Courier Journal, dies at 89

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Bob White, former sports writer for The Courier Journal, dies at 89

Bob White, the journalist who became a Kentucky institution while covering high school sports at The Courier Journal for more than four decades, died Monday. He was 89.

John Osborne, White’s brother-in-law, confirmed White’s death.

White covered a slew of Kentucky high school legends — from Darrell Griffith to Wes Unseld to Dicky Lyons and hundreds of others — and became a must-read from Paducah to Pikeville, earning the nickname “Mr. Kentucky High School Sports.”

“If you played high school sports in Louisville and Bob White came to your game, you knew it was special,” Griffith once said.

White attended Atherton High School and the University of Kentucky and worked at newspapers in Cynthiana and Cleveland, Tennessee, before joining The Courier Journal staff in 1959.

Upon his retirement in 2000, White wrote that he was an eighth grader when he attended the Sweet 16 for the first time in 1949, watching Owensboro’s Cliff Hagan score 41 points to beat Lafayette in the championship game at the old Jefferson County Armory.

White also wrote about how much the high school beat had changed since he took it over in 1962.

“There was no wrestling then,” White wrote. “That came two years later. There was no soccer, volleyball or softball. The only girls sports besides field hockey were tennis, which started in 1960, and swimming, which began in ’62.”

White wrote that some of the best boys basketball teams he covered were Seneca in 1963, Central in 1968, Male in 1970, Ballard in 1977 and Fairdale in 1990 and 1991.

“I’d like to say God blessed me with the opportunity to work at something I loved — and be paid for it, too,” White wrote. “Who says you can’t have the best of both worlds?”

After retiring in 2000, White continued to work for The Courier Journal on a part-time and freelance basis. According to Newspapers.com, his last byline for The Courier Journal came on July 20, 2017, in a story about the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame.

Even after he stopped reporting, White could be found in the bleachers at high school football and basketball games nearly every Friday night. He also was a regular at the King of the Bluegrass boys basketball tournament at Fairdale, where the MVP award is named in White’s honor.

White was inducted into the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 1997, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.

This story will be updated.

Jason Frakes: 502-582-4046; jfrakes@courier-journal.com; Follow on X @kyhighs.

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