Leading off today: Teams that will be playing for a NYSPHSAA championship in Syracuse in December are reaching the midpoint of their schedules this weekend, and a game in Section 2 on Friday may have gone a long way toward declaring a favorite for one of the sports in the Class AA title game.
Junior quarterback Archie Jones ran for a pair of touchdowns as Albany CBA, ranked fifth by the New York State Sportswriters Association, edged No. 7 Shaker, 27-19, in a battle of unbeatens.
The Brothers scored all of their touchdowns on the ground and outgained Shaker by 288-245. Some 173 of those yards came on the ground for a team that had produced more passing than rushing yards in each of its first six victories.
"I would say that we are nowhere close to our real potential yet. It shows the sky is the limit for us," Jones told the Times Union.
Said coach Bobby Burns: "We needed to run the ball and, honestly, I should have done it more in the first half. It is a good win. We will celebrate it for a few days and then get back to work."
Shaker lost senior Jake Smith, the team's leading rusher and receiver, to an ankle injury in the opening quarter. In his absence, senior Dominic DiBacco rushed three times and scored on each carry, including efforts of 35 and 50 yards.
New York Week 6 football scoreboard
Kentucky running back scores 10 touchdowns
Diminutive Byron Kirkland-Lundy of Metcalfe County High in Edmonton, Ky., ran for
490 yards and 10 touchdowns in a 70-44 football win over Clinton County on Friday.
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association record book lists the state record for TDs as nine by Matt Anderson of Pike County Central in a 2020 game, but the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Don Gullett, who went on to a MLB career with the Cincinnati Reds, scored 11 touchdowns in a 1968 game for a former KHSAA member school.
The 5-foot-8 Kirkland-Lundy scored four first-half touchdowns and then capped his night with four-more scores in the fourth quarter.
Last month, Kirkland-Lundy set the school record with 347 yards in a 34-20 victory.
We got overlooked
MaxPreps ran a feature this week highlighting schools across the nation with the
longest streaks of state championships. Among them are five teams (from four schools) that have active streaks of 34 or more titles, led by the Carmel (Ind.) girls swimming squad with 38 in a row.
Carmel still has a ways to go in order to break the national record; Jackson (Miss.) Prep won 45 straight state crowns in boys/girls swimming from 1974-2018.
The MaxPreps feature included a list of more than 200 teams that have won 10 or more consecutive state championships, data compiled with information from state associations and the NFHS record book.
Unfortunately, the contained no New York schools, and that was an oversight.
Beginning in 2006, the Fayetteville-Manlius girls cross country team earned 12 straight NYSPHSAA Class A titles.
In addition, the Christ the King girls basketball team captured 11 straight Federation championships beginning in 1990.
Lakeland field hockey and Honeoye Falls-Lima nordic skiing qualify as near-misses at nine apiece beginning in 2009, and the CHSAA and/or AIS might have candidates for the national list as well.
