Lassiter quarterback Hutson Mason had a record-setting season in 2009. But it looks like he'll have to give one of those records back.
A Dalton sports editor confirmed on Wednesday what the GHSF Daily reported last week - that a player named Ed Staten for North Whitfield High in Dalton threw nine touchdown passes in a game in 1962, one more than Mason's total in a 70-49 victory over South Gwinnett last month.
Mason this year has been credited for state records for passing yards in a season (4,533 unofficially), touchdown passes in a season (54) and passing yards in a game (552). Mason's numbers so outdistance others in history that he probably holds other records that haven't been kept or confirmed.
His eight touchdown passes against South Gwinnett were reported as a record-tying effort. Jeremy Privett of Charlton County threw eight touchdown passes in a 2003 game, and Privett's feat was listed as the state record by the Georgia High School Football Historians Association and by Georgia High School Football Magazine.
But last week, GHSF Daily reported Staten's claim to the record.
GHSF Daily's Todd Holcomb came across the story of Staten's nine touchdowns on microfilm three years ago while doing scores research for the GHSFHA. Holcomb made note of it on GHSFHA.com message boards, but Staten's accomplishment was never verified or added to any record books.
This week, Larry Fleming, the sports editor of The Daily Citizen in Dalton, found stories about the game on microfilm in The Daily Citizen and in the Chattanooga Times. Each reported Staten's nine touchdown passes. The Chattanooga newspaper listed each of the nine in a scoring summary. For today's Dalton Daily Citizen story by Fleming, click here .
The game was played on Nov. 10 and was the final game of the season. North Whitfield defeated Valley Point, another Dalton school, 81-6.
Today, Staten runs a family accounting business in Dalton.
"That shouldn't have happened," Staten told GHSF Daily of his record. "Everything we did went well. We shouldn't ever run the score up. It wasn't Coach [J.B.] Adams' policy. Everything I threw went for a score."
Staten's lost record demonstrates the difficulty in collecting state records. No effort was made to document and update them until 1991, when Steve Figueroa, now the media director of the Georgia High School Association, began publishing the Georgia High School Football Magazine. Figueroa researched old all-state teams as a start, but many records couldn't be known unless they were brought to his attention.
Even today, schools aren't required to keep statistics. Updating of records depends on the media and schools to contact the GHSFHA or the Georgia High School Football Magazine.
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