Ryle's boys soccer team won 2-1 in overtime at C.R. Borland Stadium in Union, clinching the No. 1 seed in the 33rd District tournament.
The girls' program earned theirs too. Both squads will enter the KHSAA (Kentucky High School Athletic Association) district tournament as the top-ranked team in their bracket, Ryle High School Athletics announced on X.
For the boys, the overtime finish capped a strong regular-season run under head coach Stephen Collins. The Raiders were 7-2 after a Sept. 4 comeback win over No. 12 Covington Catholic at C.R. Borland, where senior Grant McCoy scored in the 46th minute and Danny Harding followed in the 51st to rally Ryle from a halftime deficit. That 2-1 victory, first reported by LINK nky, ended CovCath's run of 26 games without a Ninth Region loss dating to September 2024.
Collins said after the Sept. 4 win over CovCath that his team still had room to grow. "We've still got a lot of work to do, and we've got to get to the point of putting a whole game together if we want to do this again because they're the team to beat in this region …" Collins said at the time.
The boys kept climbing from there. The No. 1 seed validates that September momentum heading into the postseason.
The girls' path has been a turnaround story. Head coach John Pohlman took over in 2024 and inherited a program that had not posted a winning season since 2021 or reached the Ninth Region Tournament since 2022. This fall, the Raiders beat two-time defending Ninth Region champion Highlands 1-0, a result that signaled the program's growth.
Senior Ella Hoenderkamp, a Thomas More commit who missed her entire junior season with an injury, returned for 2026 after leading Ryle with 12 goals as a sophomore and earning second-team All-Ninth Region honors. Junior goalkeeper Avery Smith also came back from a season-ending injury for the 2026 season.
"Our goals are to win district, to win region and to compete for a state championship," Pohlman told LINK nky on Aug. 27. "We've built the belief that it's anybody's district, it's anybody's region."
Step one is done.
No team other than Highlands or Notre Dame has won the Ninth Region Tournament since 2011. District tournament dates and matchups had not been announced as of Friday, Sept. 25.
