Two high school football state records fall in ‘a night to remember’ in Lexington
The game didn’t exist on the schedule until this week. But for one player, it will go down in the state record book for all time.
Pikeville wide receiver Zac Lockhart’s seven touchdown catches and 388 receiving yards on Friday night against Henry Clay broke two Kentucky High School Athletic Association records. His 17 receptions in the game are tied for third most. Pikeville won 58-41.
“This is actually the first time I’ve ever had more than one touchdown in a game,” Lockhart said. “Isaac (McNamee) found me everywhere.”
The 6-foot junior wide receiver had TD catches of 55, 56, 26, 17, 8, 13 and 54 yards. Two came on throws to the sideline that required Lockhart to toe right up to the out-of-bounds line.
McNamee, the reigning Class A state championship most valuable player, completed 23 of 32 passes for 419 yards with those seven TDs and one interception.
“He never misses a throw,” Lockhart said. “He puts the ball exactly where it needs to be at. It wasn’t hard for me to catch those balls.”
Lockhart’s 388 yards passed the mark of 357 set by Prestonburg’s Bryson Williams in 2012. His seven TDs are one more than a mark previously set by four different players.
Unaware of the exact stats right after the game, Lockhart knew the night was exceptional.
“This is definitely going to be a night for me to remember,” Lockhart said. “I got the game ball, which is pretty cool to me. It was a good night.”
The game between the defending small-school Class A champs and Class 6A’s Henry Clay was put together this week after the Blue Devils’ original opponent for their season opener, Central Hardin, had to cancel due to being in a COVID-19 quarantine.
Pikeville (3-0) had been looking for a Week 3 opponent since the season’s start after its schedule had a number of foes wiped off the calendar by the coronavirus, as well. Henry Clay, winless last season, gave them a fight for three quarters and never stopped battling despite Pikeville’s offensive explosion.
“(Henry Clay) has some great players,” Pikeville Coach Chris McNamee said. “What helped us a little bit is that this was their first game. They’re going to work a lot of those kinks out and I think they’ll be a good football team.”
After falling behind 12-0, Henry Clay (0-1) rallied with running back Clay Momeyer capping scoring drives with 1-yard plunges into the end zone. A 47-yard pass from Blake VanHorn to Kasen Parks cut the deficit to 25-21 midway through the third quarter.
Parks later picked off a McNamee pass at the 1-yard line as time wound down in the first half to give the Blue Devils a surge of momentum at the break.
Darik Holman’s 60-yard run on the first play of the second half vaulted Henry Clay to a 28-25 lead.
But Pikeville closed the game with touchdowns on its final four possessions — all McNamee-to-Lockhart scores — to put things out of reach as Henry Clay struggled to answer blow for blow.
Henry Clay’s 41 points were the most by a Blue Devils team since the 2018 season. William Webb had eight carries for 150 yards and a score. VanHorn, a sophomore and the younger brother of former Henry Clay quarterback DJ VanHorn, threw for 155 yards and two TDs — the last a 62-yard connection with Holman with under a minute left in the game.
“That’s one thing we preach to them is we don’t stop until there’s 0:00 on the clock. We’re going to keep pushing,” Henry Clay Coach Demetrius Gay, in his first year as head coach after several seasons as an assistant, said. “I saw some fight in a lot of the guys, and we made some mistakes that we’ve got to correct. But we didn’t quit.”
This story was originally published September 26, 2020 at 12:20 AM.
