Red Zone LEFT: Darrian Roman was a two-way force for Windsor in 2011, and that included the NCS Division II championship game in which he rushed for three touchdowns and added nine tackles. RIGHT: Concord junior running back Olito Thompson set three different NorCal rushing records in the Division II championship, including a staggering 54 carries.
Phillip Walton
fourth-and-26 — the 56th time he’d touched the ball on offense that night — was Concord’s final play of the game. Still, even in losing, one has to be in awe of the performance of Concord’s bruising, record-setting junior. Thompson’s carry at 6:08 of the first quarter got him past Jahvid Best (SalesianRichmond, Cal, Detroit Lions) as the all-time single-season leading rusher in the Metro Bay Area. In 2006, Best ran for 3,225 yards at Salesian. By the third quarter, he’d passed John Bordenkircher (3,416 yards in 1997 at Dixon) as the single-season leading rusher in NorCal history, according to the ESPNHS Cal-Hi Sports State Record Book. Thompson finished with a whopping 54 times for 285 yards and one touchdown. The 54 carries was also a NorCal record. He finishes the season with 3,488 yards and 35 touchdowns. Besides the No. 1 spot in Northern California, the yardage gets Thompson the state’s No. 4 spot all-time for most yards in a season. His 408 carries this season is also a NorCal record and puts him at No. 5 on the overall state list. “Whoa, really, all those records, that’s
amazing,” Thompson said. “I never thought I could do that but I guess all the hard work I put in has paid off.” No many expected a lot from Concord this season after they graduated record-setting quarterback Ricky Lloyd (now at Southern Mississippi) and his mastery of the inside zone passing game of coach Brian Hamilton. “After three years of the inside zone, it took 4-5 weeks before we went away from it and started relying on running,” Hamilton said. With four spots in the state record book already under his belt, Thompson will be working on a fifth place if he can add a little over 1,200 yards next season and get his current career total 3,732 yards over the 5,000 yard entry level mark for that list. Not surprisingly, Thompson is more into team goals. “Sure, I’d like to do more amazing things next year but my main goal is to get my team back to the NCS championship game,” he said. “I’m determined to do whatever it takes to get back to NCS, getting stronger, bigger and faster. ✪
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December 22, 2011
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