About NKBUA

In the mid-1980's, a group of high school baseball umpires in the Northern Kentucky area came together to form an association. The purpose of the association was to provide a coordinated effort to improve high school baseball umpiring in the local area. This effort included the scheduling of training sessions, the hiring of an assigning secretary to handle all umpire assignments, and the ability to provide an evaluation system for post-season assignments.

The formation of the Northern Kentucky Baseball Umpires Association was the first step in taking high school umpiring to the next level. The association was formed by many local umpires, including Mike Foulks, Joe Ponchot, Terry Bond, Larry Wilson, Mike Fogelman, and the late "Doc" Morris. These men came together to work very hard to improve baseball umpiring in our area. With the assistance of Jim Lykins and Doug Collier as assigning secretaries in the early years, the association became well known and well respected in covering local high school baseball games, as well as local college games at Northern KY University and Thomas More College.

In the most recent years, the NKBUA membership has been in the range of 45-50 umpires, covering Varsity, Junior Varsity, and Freshman baseball games in the Northern KY area. The majority of the schools covered by the association are in the counties of Boone, Kenton, and Campbell. The association does provide umpires for other schools in Gallatin and Pendleton counties.

Leadership of the association in the past several years has included Dave Arnold, Bill Macht, Stan Schilling, and David Buerger. The position of Training Coordinator has been a recent addition to the board of the association. Ron Arnsperger and J.J. Wurtz, both of whom have attended Major League Umpire Training Schools - with Ron having worked a few years of Minor League Baseball - have been instrumental in the development of the training process for the association.

The NKBUA works to provide quality umpires for the high school baseball games in our area. Through a process of training sessions and meetings, we work to achieve a standard of excellence for baseball umpiring at this level. It is our goal to be the best umpiring association we can be and for our umpires to "GET IT RIGHT".