HHS football trivia: Three questions in one

Here is a question for some of the longtime Hillsboro High School football fans in the area. Actually, I guess there are three questions.

(1.) What was the longest touchdown pass in Hillsboro High School history?

(2.) What was the longest offensive football play from scrimmage in Hillsboro High School history?

(3.) What was the longest touchdown drive in Hillsboro High School history?

Give up?

During the 1972 South Central Ohio League season, in the third game of the young season, Head Coach Dale Ambos (I’ll tell you a great story about him, someday) took the Indians to Erlanger, Ky., to play Erlanger Lloyd High School.

Early in the final quarter, the Indian defense forced Lloyd to punt.

The ball was bounding toward the goal line, when a Lloyd player dove and hit the ball to prevent it from crossing the goal line. The line judge literally got down on his hands and knees to see if the side of the ball had broken the plane of the goal line (which would have taken the ball out to the 20-yard line).

His ruling was that the ball had NOT broken the plane, but was so close that you couldn’t have slid (or, as Casey Stengel would have said “slud”) a double-edged razor blade between the edge of the football and the goal line.

I question whether or not the human eye is sharp enough to make that judgment, but his apparently was.

On Hillsboro’s next play from scrimmage, a right flank pass play was called.

Marc Fehring, who was in at quarterback, took the snap from center Rick Clemons and dropped back to within a yard of the back of the end zone. Quarterback Fehring’s twin brother, Chris, was the flanker (and primary receiver).

Chris ran down the field roughly 10 yards, then broke on a flag pattern. Quarterback Marc threw the ball across the field, where brother Chris caught it at about the 20-yard line without breaking stride, and started up the sideline full steam ahead.

Chris Fehring outran three Lloyd defenders and crossed the goal line with the first of his two touchdowns in the game.

Since a football measures roughly 11 inches in length, 99.6 yards were covered on the play, making it:

(1.) The longest touchdown pass in HHS history.

(2.) The longest offensive play from scrimmage in HHS history; and,

(3.) The longest touchdown drive in HHS history.

Mark Coffman was on that team, as well as Mark Ford, Walter Shoemaker, Pat Kelley, Rocky Day, Mike Fuller and many others who I can’t remember. (C’mon! It’s been 40 years!) Ask them about it.

Oh, and Lloyd won the game, 55-22.

Bob Patton is a Highland County sports historian and a contributing writer to The Highland County Press.