Posted on 10/11/2006 2:12:20 PM PDT by Ready4Freddy
Sugar Land star averaged 337.1 yards, 32.9 points senior season
FREDERICKSBURG, Texas - Every football season, Ken Hall expects a call telling him that someone has broken his high school rushing records.
More than 50 years later, he’s still waiting.
“I am surprised,” said Hall, now silver haired and 70. “We didn’t need to know at the time we were setting records. It was just a bunch of kids out there having fun.”
A lot of it.
From 1950 to ’53, Hall rushed for 11,232 yards for Sugar Land High School. His senior season was downright ridiculous — he averaged 337.1 yards and 32.9 points a game, also national records. His 4,045 yards rushing that year remain a national record for a 12-game season.
“It’s special to have those. There’s joy in it,” said Hall. “But records are made to be broken. I don’t know if anybody’s shooting at it. But if they are, hey, I gave them something to shoot at.”
Nicknamed the “Sugar Land Express,” Hall was also a track star, winning state championships in the 100-yard dash, long jump and shot put.
Now he shares a simple brick house in the Texas hill country with his high school sweetheart and wife of 50 years, Gloria.
They try to make every Fredericksburg High School home game, and they’re regulars at Memorial Presbyterian Church. Whenever someone asks Hall to relive the glory days, he patiently complies and tries to deliver a message along the way.
“I answer them, because if they’re bringing it up, then it has some meaning to them,” he said. “But I’ll say, ’I did set records, but I had help. You can’t do anything in life by yourself.’ And pretty soon, we’re talking about something else.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
ping
I used to work at the TI plant in Stafford and from my office I could look into sugarland. When I was there, Sugarland had the oldest (still operating) sugar mill in the US. I think it's been torn down now though.
Per Game - Season (Minimum 8 Games)
4.8 Ken Hall (Sugar Land, TX),
1953 (57/12)
Man, that's IN-CRED-A-BLE! By comparison, it took Emmitt Smith 13 years of 16 game seasons to amass 17,000-odd yards. Makes you wonder who is currently even remotely close.
And look at how long it took them to break his records - mostly 45-50 years.
OK, Dulles wasn't all that new, from their site:
The Fort Bend Independent School District was formed on April 18, 1959 by the consolidation of the Missouri City Independent School District and the Sugar Land Independent School District. At that time the facilities consisted of 2 elementary schools, a junior high, a senior high [Sugarland HS??], and two football stadiums.
A site was immediately purchased on Dulles Avenue (at that time known as Lester Road) and the construction of the Administration Building and John Foster Dulles High School began. Fort Bend ISD had its first graduating class in 1960. The first class actually graduated from the present Dulles High School in 1962. The class of 1963 was the first graduating class from Dulles High School to spend an entire year at the new facility. Many people consider Dulles High School to be the first high school in Fort Bend, since it was the first one built by the district under this new name.
Hmm, I see we got moved to Chat...
He played varsity all four years, a rare feat nowadays - that's why he won't ever be caught.
Ate at his place once - good BBQ but a bit pricey.
The new owner calls it Cranky Frank's now...
http://www.quality-television.com/sr/reviews/crankyfrank.htm
The map's wrong - it's on the south side of town.
Points per game - 32.9 Ken Hall (Sugar Land, TX), 1953 (395/12)
Touchdowns per game - 4.8 Ken Hall (Sugar Land, TX), 1953 (57/12)
Though I would guess that his career rushing yardage probably won't be surpassed for the reason you mention.
Career total yards - 14,558 Ken Hall (Sugar Land, TX), 1950-53 (3,326 passing, 11,232 rushing)
He played varsity all four years, a rare feat nowadays - that's why he won't ever be caught.
Sugar Land bookmark
Looney is the proper term.
Our daughters graduated from Dulles HS in 1978 and 1981. Our oldest son graduated from Strake Jesuit in 1979 and we moved to Washington State in 1982 where the younger son graduated in 1983 after attending SJHS for 3 years.
Dulles HS was HUGE -- just short of 5000 kids -- when our daughters attended there. Just after we moved, the district split and Stafford built their own schools (including a HS). It was highly controversial because the administration building of the Ft. Bend School district was actually located in Stafford with the city line actually going through the building.
Ft. Bend quickly built at least 2 other high schools, and I can't remember their names. With all the splitting, I hope that Dulles HS isn't so big now. That's one of the reasons we did not send our sons there. I don't think that it is prudent for a HS to be so big.
Bellaire went through the same thing you describe for Dulles - my older sister's year (1970) there were over 4,000 kids in the school, a 3-year HS at that point. It wasn't until 1971 that the newly-built Sharpstown HS started taking a significant # of students from Bellaire. I think my graduating class that year was a tad over 1,000, sister's was over 1,200 a year earlier.
LOL. Seems to have worked for them; Plano produced Earl Campbell, as I remember!
But, if you think about it -- if there are 5000 kids in a school, there are still only 12 (or 24 if you count both offense and defense) spaces on the football team. And there are only 5 starters on the basketball team, and 9 starters on the baseball team.
What are the rest of the 2500 boys doing in their spare time?
There were only about 350 boys at Strake Jesuit when my oldest son started there. Every boy was required to be on one of the sports teams at the time. They hauled my kid out of the typing class to run cross country! Four years later, he placed second in the state in the Texas Catholic School Boys League his senior year. His record was still standing at least until a couple of years ago!
During my oldest son's junior year, 1977-78, Jesuit won first in the State (Texas Catholic School Boys League again) in every sport -- Football, Cross Country, Basketball, Baseball, Golf, Track, Tennis, & Soccer.
Some of those kids went on to have great sports careers, and some of them were never heard of again. But, they had the chance to compete and achieve something memorable at a young age. They would never have had a chance to do anything at Dulles. One of my son's classmates turned down a pro- football contract to go to Med School.
The other advantage is that my two sons received an education the equivalent of the Honors classes my daughters were getting at Dulles HS. The Jesuit basic education was as vigorous as the Dulles Honors classes. The Dulles Honors classes, however, were limited to 30 kids -- Total! My sons would never have been chosen out of their 5000 schoolmates.
Sending the boys to Jesuit was expensive and very time consuming for me -- I had to drive them and pick them up at least 3 days per week for about 8 years. But, it was worth every penny I spent and every hour I sat in traffic on the Southwest Freeway! I credit their Jesuit education for all their success.
BTW, I had a hard time finding a college smaller than UT, but larger than Dulles HS, for my daughter! We chose Baylor because it had 10,000 students which didn't seem to be as forbidding as UT with their 45,000 students. I gave up on size with the younger ones, however, and one son graduated from Texas Tech and the other daughter graduated from UT. My younger son graduated from University of Washington (we moved from Texas) and later received his MS and PhD from the University of Florida.
In those years Texas seemed to have lots of teeny tiny colleges and a couple of humongous colleges -- not much in between.
Earl played at Tyler John Tyler HS (but his senior year State Championship team did beat Plano handily in the 1st round of the playoffs). Strake is a fine school, I had numerous friends from Meyerland/Bellaire (Holy Ghost kids) who went there or to St Thomas. Your boys are very fortunate to have had your sacrifices enable them to go there (I thought about the drive from where y'all lived, not an easy commute!).
LOL! The commute wasbrutal!
It was only 12 1/2 miles from my front door to the Field House front door. Both boys ran cross country and had to run 10 miles every morning before school started and another 10 miles after school -- every day, including Saturday and Sunday all year round! Actually, the running regime made the commute possible because it took us a little bit out of the rush hour.
It took 20 minutes to make the drive one way when my oldest started at Strake in 1975. By the time the youngest was in his 3rd year (1982) the same drive was taking nearly an hour -- one way. 3 of us were involved in fender benders because of that drive! We did organize various car pools over the years, but none of them really lasted long because of that track and cross country schedule.
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