Thursday, October 18, 2007

Who is Southeast Missouri's football player of the year?

Parity among Southeast Missouri's 33 high school football teams has allowed several players to put up big numbers with just weeks to go in the regular season.

Now that several athletes are rising to the top, it brings up the question: Who's the best of the best? If you could pick one person to build a high school program around for the next four years, who would it be?

I have a couple of names in mind, and, more than likely, you do too, so check out the poll on the left side of our home page and let us know your pick among the 12 that have generated the most buzz and put up some the best numbers in our region.

On defense, there's Nebraska recruit Will Compton of North County, William Norris of Hayti, and Waylon Sparkman of Perryville. All three have been among the area's leaders all season.

Offensively, quarterbacks Aaron Baker of Farmington, Kory Faulkner of Ste. Genevieve, Blake Parr of Kennett, and Jordan Politte of Potosi are on track to pass for well over 1,000 yards this season.

Or maybe the area's premiere athlete is a running back: Ryan Sawyer of Fredericktown, Demetrius Terry of Crystal City, and Adam Zweigart of Jackson, whose teams are a combined 20-1 heading into district games.

How about a mix of offense and defense? Shaun Jones of Hayti powers his team at quarterback and on defense, where he leads the region with nine interceptions. At Thayer, Michael Lowther is an offensive and defensive workhorse and leads the unbeaten Bobcats in rushing yards, return yards, interceptions and tackles.

So you tell us: Who's our area's No. 1 football player?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG... Did you just mention the town HAYTI in an article???

In all seriousness, thank you for finally recognizing that Hayti players truly do have talent worth mentioning. You failed to include them in your area 7-0 teams in an earlier article. I appreciate you recognizing our boys hard work. Maybe your omission was just accidental oversight, maybe it was intentional, but we in Hayti are very proud of what all of our boys have done.

JAMIE HALL said...

Hayti deserves a lot of credit on the outstanding season so far -- check out the football poll on our home page, where the Indians have been No. 3 out of our area's 33 football teams for much of the season.