At least that's the reported national record.
Unfortunately, the national high school record books – whether it be the NFHS or
MaxPreps version – is filled with national records that are a bit of a mystery. Some of that is due to scant information available in real time, other times it is reporting previously undocumented totals long after the fact.
MaxPreps takes a look at five possible national records that may
or may not be true.
When Hayden Cler of Indiana hauled in 26 receptions in a game earlier this season, it set off renewed interest in the national record performance by Larry Bennett in 1942. (Photo: Julie L. Brown)
1. Larry Bennett's 32 catches in one game
This record is listed in both the NFHS record book, the MaxPreps record book and the Ohio High School Athletic Association record book but the details of the actual event are few. Mogadore played Hudson on Oct. 16, 1942. That remains clear. The rest is a bit murky.
For one, Hudson won the game 53-7.
The Mogadore High School record book says the quarterback, E. Capri, completed 32 passes in the game – all to Bennett – for 335 yards. Despite all of those catches in one game, Bennett isn't listed in the school's record book for receptions in a season (the low total on the list is 59). Is it possible Bennett's 32 receptions were some kind of hand-off or lateral? Perhaps. Regardless, the facts surrounding the record are a bit mysterious.
2. Jerry Rice's 30 touchdown catches
Hall of Famer Jerry Rice holds nearly every NFL receiving record in the book. But is it possible that he also set a national record while in high school? Barely recruited out of Moor, a small high school in northeast Mississippi near Starkville that closed in 2002, Rice didn't make the all-state team by the Clarion-Ledger and wasn't even honorable mention.
However a Sports Illustrated article in 1983 stated that Rice scored 35 touchdowns as a senior on a team that went 8-1. Furthermore, a column by Jerry Byrd of the Shreveport Journal on Nov. 11, 1983, quotes Moor coach Charlie Davis as stating that Rice caught 80 passes as a senior with 30 of them going for touchdowns.
If so, that would have broken the national record of 29 by J.K. McKay of
Bishop Amat (La Puente, Calif.) in 1970. However, Rice is not listed in the Clarion Ledger's state record book, nor is he listed in the NFHS record book. MaxPreps will wait for the mystery to get a little clearer before adding Rice to its record book.
3. Vann Fixico holds multiple national baseball records
According to the MaxPreps record book, the national record for career home runs is 75, career doubles is 95, career strikeouts is 856 and career base hits is 361, all by different players. Vann Fixico of Southside (Altus, Oklahoma), if you believe the statistics kept by his coach Don Muse, would hold all of those records by himself. By a lot.
Fixico played at a Class C school in southwest Oklahoma that played baseball in the fall and spring. He played five varsity seasons and according to an article by Oklahoman prep writer Ray Soldan on April 4, 1965, Fixico had career totals of 1,220 strikeouts, 407 base hits, 127 doubles and 72 home runs. Soldan's article was published with about a month left in the season so Fixico added eight more home runs by May for a total of 80 and added to his strikeout, base hit and doubles totals as well, but his final stats in those categories aren't available. He also had 84 career pitching wins, which would rank third all-time.
Fixico's teammate Gary Derryberry also had tremendous stats, according to Soldan, and would rank among the nation's all-time leaders in doubles (91) and triples (32). Here's the problem, though. According to Derryberry, in correspondence with MaxPreps this summer, Muse tended to fudge the stats a little bit.
"I think he did that to get us scholarships," Derryberry said.
Fixico was certainly a talented player. He played in college, was drafted by the San Francisco Giants and played several years at the minor league level. Just how much Muse skewed the stats is unknown. As a result, however, Fixico's career stats remain incomplete and mysterious.
4. Arthur Smith passes for 15 touchdowns in one game
In a 201-7 win over Overton in November 1921,
Cozad (Neb.) quarterback Arthur Smith is credited with throwing 15 touchdowns and rushing for 10 scores. The 15 touchdown passes would be a national record. The mystery here is whether or not Smith actually threw that many touchdown passes.
Cozad obviously scored 201 points and all of the players who scored the 30 touchdowns in the game are listed in the story in the Cozad Local, but the story doesn't actually say that Smith threw any touchdown passes in the game. The story says that 34 passes were thrown but it doesn't necessarily say that Smith threw them or how many of them went for touchdowns. No real time documentation has been found to show Smith threw 15 touchdown passes, so that record remains a mystery.
5. Kenneth Hall rushes for a national record 11,232 career yards
Kenneth Hall has long been the king of prep football rushing and scoring records ever since his exploits were released in the Texas High School Football Record Book by Bill McMurray in July of 1973.
The first publication to cite Hall's totals with 11,232 career rushing yards and 4,045 yards in a season, the record book was not published until 20 years after Hall graduated. The mystery surrounding Hall is not a question of whether or not Hall had such crazy rushing totals, because he obviously did. The mystery is where did McMurray get such specific numbers?
Hall reportedly gained 4,045 yards rushing his senior year of 1953. The Houston Chronicle published totals for seven of Hall's 12 games that year and they added up to 1,931 yards. That leaves 2,114 yards unaccounted for to be gained in Hall's five other games. That's an average of 423 yards rushing per game. While that's certainly possible, it's a mystery that the Chronicle did not report yardage totals in games in which Hall supposedly rushed for over 400 yards.
On Dec. 13, 1953, Dick Freeman of the Houston Chronicle wrote a column summarizing Hall's career totals. While all of Hall's touchdown and point totals in Freeman's account match the totals in McMurray's record book, the rushing totals do not. In fact Freeman says that Hall had 11,200 career rushing yards and 3,700 career passing yards (Hall is credited with 3,365 career passing yards by McMurray), but that those totals were estimates. The Associated Press mentioned several times in stories regarding Hall that his exact rushing and passing stats for Hall were not kept so no official records existed. Yet in 1973 – 20 years later – official records with exact totals appeared in McMurray's book.
Perhaps those totals included punt returns and kickoff returns. Hall returned plenty of those for touchdowns. So the 11,232 career rushing yards and 4,045 single-season rushing yards are hard to fathom. Not saying they aren't true, but they are a mystery.