That's A Lotta Yards

I know (hope?) y'all count on me to find odd little tid-bits to entertain. This one comes from The Athletic a couple weeks back.

A high school quarterback in Louisiana, Peyton Houston, accounted for  905 yards of total offense, passing for 817 yards in a single game. Playing for Evangel Christian (Shreveport, LA) in a game against Captain Shreve, Houston completed 53 of 68 passes for eight touchdowns and rushed for two more.

Yet his school lost the game in overtime, 77-76. Seems Evangel Christian scored first in OT, missed the two-point conversion, and Captain Shreve won.

Still, that's a lotta offense from a high school quarterback. There's probably guys out there who haven't thrown for 817 yards in a season, let alone a game.

Will Grier still holds the national record of 837 yards set in 2012 when Grier played for Davidson Day in North Carolina, according to MaxPreps. The site, which tracks high school sports stats, also noted that Houston set a Louisiana state record, topping the previous mark of 639 passing yards set by T.J. Finley in 2018 while playing for Ponchatoula High School.

Got me to wondering about Wisconsin High School football player statistics. We're well into the playoffs, but for the regular season a bit of research on the Wisconsin Sports Network's website produced the following regular season stats..

• Medford's Paxton Rothmeier, averaging over 10 yards a carry, led all state runners with 2,001 yards.
• Josiah Johnson, Milwaukee Academy Of Science, had 29 touchdowns (rushed for 1,975 yards, averaging 12.2 a carry).
• Matthew Buckman, Cambridge, passed for 2,720 yards and 34 touchdowns.
• Shaundel Williams, a junior at South Milwaukee, led all receivers with 74.
• Kiefer Parish, Cambridge, has 1,021 yards (averaging 15.5 per catch); sophomore Bryce Austin of Racine Lutheran caught 47 passes for 1,013 yards -- a whopping 21.6 yards per catch.

The WIAA football playoffs entered their second weekend. Of the large field, there were also 73 eight-man teams representing nine conferences (and six independents) taking to the playoff field.

Found this one hard to believe. Shohei Ohtani’s 50th home run ball sold at auction for nearly $4.4 million, a record high price for any ball in any sport.