Kentucky proud: Four extraordinary sports achievements by Kentuckians in 2025
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- Yared Nuguse set an indoor mile world record at Millrose, briefly holding it.
- ZaKiyah Johnson closed her prep career with a fourth state title and Miss Basketball.
- Will Smith hit a World Series Game 7 homer; Wan’Dale Robinson topped 1,000 receiving yards
The calendar year 2025 gave us an American-born pope, an Artificial Intelligence explosion and another 365 days of dispiriting political discord.
Amid the tumult, Kentuckians can draw inspiration from the remarkable sports achievements in 2025 of four natives of the commonwealth.
On Feb. 13, Louisville native Yared Nuguse did more than earn his third straight win in the Millrose Games’ Wanamaker Mile in New York City. Inheriting the lead with three laps to go, the Manual High School alumnus held off fellow American Hobbs Kessler to post a new world record in the men’s indoor mile, 3:46.63.
Imagine the exhilaration that must come from knowing one has done something with as much history as the mile run better than it has ever been done indoors by anyone at anytime anywhere in the world.
Hopefully Nuguse, who finished third in the 2024 Paris Olympics in the 1,500 meters run, basked in that feeling — because the Louisvillian held the world record for five days.
On Feb. 13, in a meet in Lievin, France, Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen ran the indoor mile in 3:45.14 to take away the world record.
Still, whatever his future holds, Yared Nuguse will have always been a world record holder.
In the spring, ZaKiyah Johnson wrote the only appropriate ending to her storied Kentucky high school basketball career by leading Sacred Heart Academy to the 2025 girls state championship.
This is what Johnson accomplished in her epic run as a high school hooper in our state:
• Won four state championships;
• Won four state tournament MVP awards;
• Won the Gatorade Kentucky Player of the Year Award four times;
• Earned the 2025 Kentucky Miss Basketball Award;
• Earned recognition as a 2025 McDonald’s All-American.
Just to put a bow on things, Johnson averaged 31 points to lead the Kentucky All-Stars to a two-game sweep of Indiana in the annual series pitting the best high school players from each state.
Whether it is because she transferred from a public school (Shelby County) to a private school (Sacred Heart); or because there is “Sacred Heart fatigue” after all those Valkyries state championships; or because she eschewed the instate universities in favor of playing collegiately at LSU, the level of acclaim Johnson has gotten in Kentucky does not match her achievements.
That’s too bad, because we will never see another Kentucky high school basketball player, female or male, match the career that Johnson concluded in 2025.
On the night of Nov. 1, World Series Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays was tied 4-4 in the top of the 11th inning when the L.A. catcher, Will Smith, came up to bat with two outs and no one on base.
An alumnus of Kentucky Country Day High School and the University of Louisville, Smith worked a 2-0 count against Toronto pitcher Shane Bieber.
On the third pitch, Smith jumped on a slider that hung over the middle of the plate and sent the ball soaring over the left-field wall. His home run, ultimately, provided the Dodgers the winning margin for what was their second-straight World Series title.
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Smith’s heroics at the plate came in a World Series in which he caught 73 innings (the seven-game series included extra-inning games of 18 and 11 innings), the most ever by a catcher in the Fall Classic.
Interestingly, the Dodgers franchise has now won the World Series nine times. In four of those triumphs, a player from the state of Kentucky has either:
Hit a home run in Game 7 that provided the winning margin (Lexington’s Lou Johnson in 1965 and Smith in 2025) or retired the final out to clinch the series championship (Louisville’s Pee Wee Reese on a grounder in 1955 and Lexington’s Walker Buehler on a strikeout in 2024) for the Dodgers.
On Dec. 28 in Las Vegas, New York Giants wideout Wan’Dale Robinson, the former Western Hills and Kentucky Wildcats star, crossed a defining statistical threshold for the first time in his NFL career.
In a 34-10 New York win over the Raiders, Robinson caught 11 passes for 113 yards. For the season, that gave the Frankfort product 92 catches and 1,014 receiving yards. With one game remaining in the NFL season, Robinson is above 1,000 receiving yards in a season for the first time as a pro.
What makes that notable is that almost no one of his physical stature has ever amassed 1,000 yards as a receiver in the NFL.
The Giants list Robinson at 5-foot-8, 185 pounds.
In all of recorded NFL history, only two players of less height — the 5-6 Lionel James (1,027 receiving yards in 1985) and the 5-7 Richard Johnson (1,091 in 1989) — have ever had 1,000-yards-plus receiving yards in a season.
Wan’Dale Robinson is building quite the legacy by doing things people think he shouldn’t be able to do.
In the big picture, the triumphs in 2025 by Nuguse and Johnson, Smith and Robinson serve as a worthy reminder that, with talent and the will to apply it, one can start in Kentucky and ascend to the highest peaks.
For Kentuckians in sports, 2026 has a lot to live up to.
