High school sports fans in Oregon have been treated to a show by Aloha’s Thomas Tyner this year. The guy is on an unbelievable pace. Already he has set state records for rushing yards (643) and touchdowns (10) in a game, and he could eclipse the single-season record of 3,335 yards set by Sisters High School’s Cory McCaffrey in 2006.
See, with football, it’s easy to discern those records. In other sports it’s more challenging.
Scappoose High School’s Ariel Viera scored her 100th career goal in soccer on Wednesday. In trying to figure out the state record for goals scored and how many players have eclipsed the century mark, a series of e-mails had to go back and forth.
Originally Steve Walker at the OSAA said the record was 116 by Jesuit’s Laura Schott, with Tualatin’s Anna-Maria Popma also in the century club with an even 100. Then, more than a full day later, Steve passed on another email that said Tiffeny Milbrett scored 131 goals in her high school career – the most for any player, boy or girl, in Oregon history.
But when I was talking on the phone with Steve, he lamented the fact the OSAA does not have a database of these records compiled anywhere.
He’s right – Oregon needs a record book for all sports.
Steve said such a compilation exists for football and basketball, but there’s no real definite way to know what the exact record for goals scored or home runs hit in a season.
That is a shame.
When someone scores 100 goals or cracks 15 minutes in a cross country race or finishes the season with a .22 ERA, that person should be able to see how they stack up with other greats throughout Oregon prep history. This is especially true in today’s world of instant accessibility to information.
If you want to know the last time an Oregon Duck receiver had 1,200 yards in a season, it doesn’t take long to find out. It took me less than 30 seconds to find out that it has never happened. Bob Newland has the single-season record with 1,123 yards in 1970.
Yes, I used a stopwatch. No, I didn’t know the record happened to be just under 1,200 yards. But I did know that Googling “Oregon Ducks football stats history” leads you to a lot of useful sites, like www.totalfootballstats.com, for example.
Google doesn’t give you as many useful sites when you type in “Oregon high school goal scoring records.” In fact, a blog entry I wrote for another website was the eighth result (Shameless plug.) It was using the information given to me by Walker… the information that led me to believe Viera was the third – not fourth – athlete to score 100 goals.
If you know any high school coaches or athletic directors, urge them to compile a list of the top five individual stat leaders in important categories. Things like goals, shutouts, assists, home runs, batting average, ERA. Have them contact the OSAA and help them create a database.
It’s something Oregon could – and should – have for all sports.
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