127 points not good enough for VHSL

Stuff like this just makes my blood boil.

Morris’ contribution: 127 points. His total shot attempts are lost to history, but Morris made 57 field goals, a bucket about every 30 seconds. He was 13 for 21 from the foul line, shooting underhanded “granny-style,” as required by coach Smith.

[…]

Morris’ point total still stands as the second-highest nationwide for a high school player. The record, set a year earlier in 1960, is 135. Morris is one of 15 high school boys to score more than 100 in a game, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

His 57 field goals that night are a national record.

Morris holds another record from that night for which he’s not recognized: highest point total in a Virginia high school basketball game.

So the record is good enough for the national record book is not good enough for Virginia? And why would that be?

I.C. Norcom couldn’t be part of the all-white Virginia High School League in the segregated South in 1961. The school belonged to the VIA from 1954 until integration in 1969.

The VHSL maintains records for schools that were part of its league when the record was set, said Ken Tilley, VHSL executive director.

“VIA was a separate organization, and we don’t have access to that information,” Tilley said.

Except:

Morris’ feat has been listed in the national record book since 1978, the first year it was published. The Virginia High School League had to sign off on the record before the national group would accept it, said John Gillis, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations and editor of the group’s record book.

And those records of the all-black, Virginia Interscholastic Association? Lost? Nope:

Lucious Edwards, archivist at Virginia State University in Petersburg, which maintains VIA records, said the records are open to review.

The records exist and are readily available. At some point, somebody at the VHSL looked at them – or at least was aware of their existence; otherwise, they would not have been able to certify it for inclusion in the national record. So what could be behind the VHSL not including the record, now that we know their excuse isn’t much of one?

If the VHSL had said the reason the records weren’t included was because they don’t have the manpower to put them in, I might buy it. Hell, I’d even volunteer to help them update the data. But here were are, some forty years after integration, and the VHSL’s excuse is they don’t have the records?

Here we are, in 2010, in supposedly an integrated, multicultural society, and something as simple as a record book is not complete. Anyone who claims we have no need for Black History Month needs to look no further than stuff like this.

He’s not aware of any other records in the national book that aren’t in the respective state’s record book, Gillis said.

And Virginia stands alone, one more time.