When I was in the eighth grade at Hamilton Terrace Junior High, Bobby Ray McHalffey was the quarterback of a Bossier High football team that won the Class A state championship with a 21-0 victory over a Reserve team led by Leroy Labat, who later played at LSU.

Bossier High's only other state championship came in 1942, when Eugene "Red" Knight transferred from St. John's (now Loyola) to Bossier High because St. John's dropped football because of World War II.

Knight was a great athlete in high school and college. At LSU, he won the Southeastern Conference javelin championship in track and was considered a pro prospect as a catcher on the baseball team. In football, all he did was break the Southeastern Conference record for yards per carry in a season, averaging 7.8 yards per attempt. LSU no longer recognizes that record, requiring a minimum of 200 attempts in recent years. That means nobody who played before 1970 has a chance for the record because nobody had 200 attempts in a season before 1970.

At Bossier High, he scored the first time he touched the ball in each of the Bearkats' first five games, and wound up scoring most of the team's touchdowns -- seven in a victory over Texarkana.

"I come from Tough Street in Bossier City," he told his LSU teammates. "The further you go, the tougher it gets, and I live in the last house on the right." He set a career rushing record at LSU that was later broken by Billy Cannon.

Another "Red" on the 1942 Bossier High team was end Johnny Robertson, who later became a Hall of Fame coach in high school football, leading Ferriday to four straight state championships in the early 1950s. Ferriday had a 54-game unbeaten streak After 41 straight wins, they had a 13-13 tie with Jena on Sept. 21, 1956, before winning their nextg 12 games. The win streak nearly ended a week before the Jena game, against Delhi. With the score tied at 13, Delhi was driving for what might have been a winning touchdown. But on the last play of the game, as the Delhi quarterback rolled out for a pass, Ferriday's Tony Brocato knocked the ball out of his hand and into the hands of sophomore Tommy Brasher, who ran 70 yards for the winning touchdown and kicked the extra point in a 20-13 victory.

Robertson thought the winning streak might have been longer if Brasher's family hadn't moved to El Dorado, Ark., after his sophomore year. "They gave his dad a good job up there," Robertson recalled. "I cried all summer."

In seven years at Ferriday, Robertson produced 14 players who went on to play college football. Three of them (All-America center Max Fugler, Donnie Daye and Manson Nelson) played for Paul Dietzel at LSU.

I came across Red Knight's name this week when I was reading a book titled "Podnuh, Let Me Tell You a Story" by long-time major league baseball scout Mel Didier, who is in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. He played football and baseball with Knight at LSU.

Didier was a high school coach and college coach (at LSU) before he became a full-time baseball scout. He was the Opelousas High football coach when Opelousas lost to Minden, 7-0, in the 1956 Class 2A state finals -- the year before I started my 52-year sports writing career. George Doherty was the Minden coach.

Didier also coached baseball at Catholic High in Baton Rouge, his alma mater. His 1953 team was the first Baton Rouge team to win a state championship in baseball, beating Ouachita 2-0 on a three-hitter by Artron Bertrand after Tommy Barfield pitched a two-hitter in a 3-0 semifinal win over Holy Cross. That Catholic High team had a 50-2 record, which is probably the state record for most baseball victories in one season. Before I read about that team in his book, I thought the record was 44 by a 1965 Fair Park team coached by James Farrar that had a 44-4-1 record.

If anybody out there knows of any other teams that won 44 or more games, let me know about them so I won't be spreading any more bad information. My e-mail address is jbsportswriter@juno.com.

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