Chaz Baxter from Primose High School is clocked at 3.91 seconds.
PRIMROSE, CA - The only time fame lassoed Primrose - a farm town in Central California - was a decade ago when Mabel Wilson won $2.1-million in the state lottery. Otherwise, this slow, three-stoplight, no-Starbucks town is ruled by dusty roads, Sunday school and crickets. That all changed two months ago, however, with the speed of a lightning strike.
Now, media crews, college scouts and sports enthusiasts everywhere invade Primrose on a daily basis to witness America’s No. 1 football recruit.
“I can’t believe all the attention,” said Chaz Baxter, a junior at Primrose High School. “It’s all happened so fast.”
Like 3.91 seconds fast.
That’s the time it takes for Baxter to run 40 yards, the measure for which all football players are tested. Before last month, the fastest official time ever recorded by a football player was 4.24 seconds and 4.09 hand-timed. Baxter, a 5-foot-11, 180-pound backup running back, shattered those marks not once, but more than a dozen times in the last 30 days. He was timed electronically and viewed publically by shell-shocked college coaches, track and field connoisseurs, longtime sports journalists and even scientists.
Under legal wind readings, Baxter has busted 4.0 seconds nine times including a best of 3.91.
“It’s like watching a deer bursting from danger,” said Primrose track coach John Harrison.
Baxter has always been quick — he ran 10.98 seconds to win a sectional 100-meter track championship as a sophomore – but with a recent change in training and foot apparel has zoomed into an entirely new stratosphere, thrusting him into the national spotlight and sleepy Primrose into the media limelight.
“The funny thing is I was going to quit football and just concentrate on track,” Baxter said. “Everything changed when my dad bought me those shoes.”
Official time, 3.91 seconds.
Photo by Bryce Escobar
Leroy Baxter pushed his son toward track because Chaz’s lack of playing time and he himself was a former sprint champion in Mississippi. He bought his boy a pair of new shoes – Nike Air Max running shoes - after the football season and told him to forget the gridiron. “Sprint to stardom,” he advised.
With a new spring in his step and total work ethic, Baxter did.
“Every day – rain or shine – that kid would lace them up, hit the stadium and sprint up those stairs hour after hour after hour,” Harrison said.
He gained speed and endurance and strength and when Primrose football coach Frank Fletcher tested players in the 40, he asked Baxter to give it a try. Baxter had been timed once in the 40 his freshman season, recording a promising 4.81. Fletcher was expecting a one-tenth-of-a-second improvement, not nearly an entire second.
“When he went 3.97 I thought my stopwatch malfunctioned so I had him do it again,” Fletcher said. “When he went 3.99 I got another stop watch and told him to try it one more time. When he went 3.95 I started making calls. No Joke.”
Now the entire world knows and even though he ranked No. 1,452 on the 2009 MaxPreps.com national leader board with 443 yards rushing, he’s now been offered football scholarship by every major college in the country.
“I don’t care if you’ve never stepped on the football field, if you can run that fast, college and pro teams want you,” said MaxPreps football editor Steve Spiewak.
If that happens, and Baxter plays on Sundays, “He’ll definitely hit the jackpot,” Spiewak said.
And no doubt surpass Mrs. Wilson around Primrose in both fame and fortunate.
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