AS SPORTS history books go, there may be none more woefully inad equate than the annual National High School Sports Record Book.
The book is loaded with records for individual achievement within team competitions. But it’s far too polite to note that many to most of these records were ill-gotten, that they’re antithetical to both sports and genuine achievement.
They’re twisted records that would not have been possible without the guiding, nurturing hands of adults.
The National High School Sports Record Book might be subtitled, “Kids Kicking Other Kids When They’re Down,” “The Big Book of Shooting Fish in a Barrel,” or “Lanyards, Whistles and Clipboards: Coaches Who Need Coaches.”
And so the next edition will note that the girls record for points scored in a basketball game belongs to Epiphanny Prince, who scored 113 for Murry Bergtraum HS in a game against Brandeis. The book will not record that the final score was 137-32.
While the book currently notes that Cheryl Miller is the record-holder, having scored 105 points against Riverside Norte Vista HS in 1982, it does not provide the final score. It was 179-15.
Oh, yeah, it’s the Good Book of Bad.
The book will not record that Bergtraum’s coach, a champ of a prince of a role model named Ed Grezinsky, had Epiphanny play the entire game. It will not record Grezinsky’s post-game words-to-live-by-and-grow-on, “I took all the other starters out, and we only pressed a little bit.”
It will not record that the opposing coach, Vera Springer, in her 34th year as a coach, said she’d never experienced anything so needlessly abusive.
It will not record that Murry Bergtraum, the namesake of Epiphanny’s school, was president of the NYC Board of Education. It will not record that Brandeis High was named for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a warrior against social injustice.
And it will not record that after the game, Coach Grezinsky said, “I’m not apologizing for her. She got what she was able to get.”
What a noble sentiment. What a noble gent. But he’s right, ya know. He shouldn’t apologize for her, he should apologize to her.
Back to the record book: The most TD passes in one football game is 10. Clifton Davis did it for Mississippi’s Sardis North Panola, in 1990, against Coldwater High. The final score does not appear. It was 95-0. Seriously.
The 1996 edition has a picture of Californian Chad Bickley on the cover. Chad holds the record for 3-point shots made in a game. He scored 60 of his 89 points on 3-pointers. Fabulous!
The book doesn’t tell us that Chad’s coach should have, during the second half, let someone else play instead of Chad. After all, Chad’s Valley Christian Academy team, as the book doesn’t tell us, beat New Cuyuma, 130-48.
It also doesn’t tell us that Chad’s coach was Stan Bickley, Chad’s father.