North Harford running back Cole Dickerson was sidelined by an injury for Friday's game at Bel Air, but his stats won't suffer because he did the work of two backs the previous week.
In the Hawks' 35-34 win over Fallston on Oct. 14, Dickerson ran the ball 56 times, tying the state record for most carries in a game. He gained 261 yards that night, scored four touchdowns and suffered the bruised knee that kept him out of the loss to Bel Air.
Hawks coach Gene Liebel usually runs two backs, but on homecoming, JT Kidd was "unavailable," the coach said, declining to elaborate.
"Cole said, 'With JT out, I'll carry the load for us.' It was homecoming, he wanted the ball, so we kept giving it to him," Liebel said.
Dickerson said he had never carried the ball anywhere near that many times in a game.
"I knew I had to take the whole workload on. It was almost unbelievable. I knew it was a lot of carries but I didn't know it was that many."
Dickerson tied the record set by Kent Island's Evan Greenwood, also against Fallston, in a playoff game on Nov. 22, 2013. Coincidentally, Liebel was at that game too, as a Fallston assistant coach.
Neither Dickerson nor Liebel had any idea he had tied the record until the coach found out Saturday. During the team film session Monday, he divulged it to the team by putting the list of top single-game carries in Maryland state history on the board.
"I've grown up in the North Harford district," Dickerson said, "so I've been going to these games since I was really little and I've seen some really talented people play there, so it's really cool that I got a team record. It's more of a team record than an individual record. I'm not getting 56 carries if the line doesn't do their job or if fullback Jackson Stinar doesn't do his job blocking for me."
Dickerson, however, did enjoy bragging rights in his own family. As the third of four football-playing brothers, he is the only one with a state record. That means a little more since his older brother Wyatt Dickerson won a few MIAA A Conference championships while playing at Gilman.
"He's got the championships. I've got the record," Dickerson said. "But they're proud of me."
This season, Dickerson has run 159 times for 1,074 yards and 15 touchdowns. He has also caught nine passes for 154 yards and one touchdown for the Hawks (5-3).
He plans to be back in action Friday against C. Milton Wright. Dickerson said he was cleared to play by his doctor Monday.