What are sports without records?
Sports fans love champions, breathtaking plays and graceful athletes. They want to see greatness, but they also want to quantify and compare greatness. They want to know how today’s stars stack up against yesterday’s legends.
When you boil it down, fans want know the score, whether it’s Flathead versus Billings West or the present versus history. And athletes want to know where they rank in history.
But how are they supposed to know when, at the high school level, nobody really knows?
Frequently, a high school athlete in Montana begins to “threaten records,” but what records are in danger isn’t always clear. The Montana High School Association keeps a record book for all sanctioned high school sports, but it relies on schools to provide the information.
The result is that some remarkable seasons and performances, over time, may exist only through storytelling, not official documentation. In an age when people can find nearly any college or professional sports record in an instant on the Internet, high school sports fans must often rely on lore and memory.
“If schools don’t send records into us, we don’t know,” Scott McDonald, assistant director for MHSA, said. “They might not be the most accurate in the state of Montana.”
So what are the most accurate? MHSA officials suggest speaking with a tenured sports reporter like Ed West, formerly of the Billings Gazette, or sportscaster Rocky Erickson of the Northern News Network. But individual men and news organizations, no matter their personal memory banks or archive databases, have limitations.
Records are surefire conversation starters in any Montana community, especially during this time of year, when sports seasons are winding down and numbers are adding up. Take Columbia Falls’ Nate Thompson, for example. Thompson, a senior running back, is nearing the unofficial school record for single-season rushing yards but it’s tough to tell exactly where he stacks up all time.
According to the MHSA record books, Thompson’s per-game average of 200.8 yards is the third-best in state history, just behind Lewistown’s Dana Knox and Butte Central’s R.J. Olson. But there is no clear-cut way to know how many other comparable or better seasons there have truly been. Maybe one in the 1930s? Maybe a few in 1970s?
Even Thompson’s father, an assistant football coach and the Columbia Falls Activities Director, recalls a season from his Wibaux head coaching days in the early 1990s when one of his players rushed for as many or more yards as his son.
When he was at Wibaux, Thompson said the MHSA launched a campaign encouraging schools to submit statistics in an effort to compile a statewide record book for all sports. Those efforts laid the foundation the MHSA record books that can be found online today.
“It was an ambitious project,” Thompson said.
At times, in the absence of information or the presence of misinformation, it’s best to go to the source itself. When the Beacon was working on a story about former Flathead High School quarterback Brock Osweiler, a reporter was presented with a hand-scrawled career statistics sheet.
Osweiler and his coach decided to sit down and figure out the correct numbers – along with their place in history – once and for all. It was history being documented the old-fashioned way, with a pencil and a piece of paper.
But while Osweiler’s place in school history seems to be firmly established, he is not listed in the MHSA record books, presumably because his statistics were never submitted. His numbers would rank in several categories, but then again, there are surely other top passers who aren’t included as well.
In October 2003, longtime Missoulian sports reporter Rial Cummings wrote a story about Whitefish running back Jolly Righetti rushing for 446 yards against Columbia Falls. Twice the story states that the feat was “believed to be” a single-game record. Righetti’s game isn’t mentioned in the MHSA books.
“As it turned out, the previous single-game record appears to have been 410 yards, set by Josh Michael of Class C Park City against Bridger-Belfry in October, 1996,” Cummings wrote. “And, given the spotty state of Montana record keeping, a better game may yet turn up.”
State tournament records, on the other hand, are much easier to track. For each sport, they happen once a year, allowing MHSA officials to compile statistics from a single event and then enter them in its records.
Monitoring every event of every sport at 179 schools during the regular season, however, is obviously impossible for the small MHSA staff. McDonald said an avid fan from the public helps amass the track and field records, which are extensive.
Other state high school associations face the same circumstances: lots of sports and not many staff members. Cheryl Millington of the Idaho High School Activities Association (IHSAA), the MHSA’s equivalent, said high school associations don’t have the benefit of full-time statistician staffs found at higher levels of competition.
Millington’s organization only documents state tournament records, though there is an independent website, www.idahosports.com, dedicated to tracking high schools sports. The IHSAA, MHSA and other 48 state associations submit their records to the National Federation of State High School Associations for consideration in its official record book. All records must be verified by the schools, at both the state and national levels.
“Sometimes we miss it and the school calls and says, hey, my kid did this and then we have to go back and verify it,” Millington said. “We don’t even try to keep track of the regular season.”
How well a school documents its own statistics varies widely. At Columbia Falls, Thompson said there isn’t a go-to source for football records, but there are extensive records for wrestling, track and volleyball, dating back a half-century.
“A lot of it has to do with turnover in coaching staffs,” Thompson said. “Some schools do better than other schools.”
So, what are sports without records? They are still moments of grace. They are still games that make our hearts stop. They are still flashes of greatness. Perhaps they are everything we want them to be, with a few numbers missing. And maybe, in this digital age, it’s nice to see history stay alive through stories and memories, rather than only statistics and paper.