Two national football records set, one tied

Last week was an amazing week for high school football across the USA and national records continue to pour in to MaxPreps.

For example, Westside Christian Academy (Detroit, Mich.) amassed an incredible national-record 1,129 yards (642 rushing and 487 passing) while shutting out Oakland Christian (Auburn Hills, Mich.), 46-0. The previous record of 912 yards was set in 1967 by Happy Camp (Calif.) against McCloud (Calif.), according to the National High School Record Book.

Westside Christian has 86 students in grades 9-12. The football team has 31 members, six from nearby Detroit Community, which does not have a team of its own.

“I had no idea,” coach Sean Tarrant said of his team’s national record yardage. “Matter of fact, when I looked at the final stats, I thought, ‘Can this be right?’ We had four touchdowns (from 35 to 65 yards) called back.”



Junior running back Dilaneo Dawson (6-foot, 180 pounds) used his 4.4 speed (40-yard dash) to carry 14 times for 362 yards and three touchdowns. He had three others called back by penalties. Tarrant said Dawson already has drawn interest from such colleges as Michigan and Michigan State.

Senior quarterback Victor Davidson (6-0, 190) completed 13 of 19 passes for 453 yards and four touchdowns, with just one interception.

The Warriors have compiled a 6-2 record - outscoring their opponents by a whopping 333-120 - in just their second year of varsity football. They hope to play in Michigan’s Division 6 state tourney this fall.

Last year they compiled a perfect 12-0 record and won the National Association of Christian Athletics national championship.

Tarrant said that all of last year’s 11 graduating seniors are playing college football this fall.

* And there’s the Jared May story. We wrote about him several weeks ago when he fired nine touchdown passes - just missing the national record - for Canton South (Canton, Ohio).



The next week he completed 42 of 73 passes for 560 yards and seven touchdowns during a 50-33 victory over West Branch (Beloit, Ohio).

Then, this past weekend he fired a national-record 87 passes and tied the national record with 46 completions during a 35-18 loss to unbeaten Marlington (Alliance, Ohio). He gained 446 yards and two touchdowns through the air.

The previous record was 83 passing attempts by Brian Kauffman of Hill-Murray (Maplewood, Minn.) in 2001. Three others share the record of 46 completions.

“We’ve had to have him chuck it around a bit lately,” Canton South coach Moe Daniska noted. “He’s been doing all of this on a bum ankle the last couple of weeks. He hasn’t had any mobility (to run).

“I wish we weren’t at that stage where we had to be setting national records out of necessity. Since we’ve had Jared here, I’m finding out about all kinds of records. We dropped four touchdown passes. One hit our kid in the helmet. He would be off the charts even if we caught half of the balls we should have caught (during the season).”

* We thought that Firestone (Akron, Ohio) senior kicker Alana Gaither recent 43-yard field goal could be a national record, but nobody seemed to have records for girls field goals.



Now, however, we have discovered Paul Luchter, a 59-year-old Long Island, N.Y., bachelor who started keeping records as a youngster and especially loves “off-beat” records like field goals by females.

He operates the information-laden luckyshow.org website and has verified that the national record actually is 48 yards by Heidi Garrett, who performed the magical feat in 2004 for Martin Luther King (Riverside, Calif.). He also lists kicks of 46, 45, 44 and seven others of 43 yards.

Garrett's 48-yard field goal is also confirmed in the calhisports.com record book.

Luchter calls them “Lucky’s Amazing Sports Lists.”

“I was always good at numbers,” he said. “I like history and I’m an amazing research person. Female football is probably one of the more obscure things that I do. I do some hockey, but mostly the main sports of football, basketball and baseball.”