High-School Hair-Raiser: Haven 256, Sylvia 0

HAVEN, Kan. - Sixty-five years later, Louis Koch sits in an easy chair and shakes his head in wonderment.

"It's hard for you to believe or anybody else to believe that such a game happened," Koch said. "I played in it, and it's still hard for me to believe."

Koch, 82, was recalling the highest-scoring game in football history, a high-school mismatch on Nov. 16, 1927. The final: Haven 256, Sylvia 0.

The Haven Wildcats scored 38 touchdowns and kicked 28 extra points. They scored every time they touched the ball, which was often. They had help from the Sylvia coach. Five times he exercised the option of having his team kick off after Haven had scored. Each time, Koch recalled, the kickoffs were returned for touchdowns.

"They got 256 points, but why shouldn't they?" said Glen Gaston, captain of the losing team. "They weren't playing against anybody. It's easy to run for touchdowns when nobody's there to tackle you."

Gaston said several Sylvia players, discouraged by the mounting score and being overmatched in size and speed, sat down and didn't make an effort to stop the Haven runners.

Koch, blocking back in the Haven single-wing and later a high-school coach, scoffed at the suggestion that Sylvia players laid down. He said there were always opponents to hit.

Koch said Haven had an exceptional group of well-coached athletes. The Wildcats outscored seven other opponents 323-0. Their closest game was 27-0.

The offensive star for Haven was Elvin McCoy, a running back and kicker, who remains the most prolific scorer of all time. Against Sylvia, he had 90 points (13 touchdowns and 12 extra points). Team captain Jesse Atkinson scored 60 points.

Other details are sketchy. Researchers say the "statistician" had enough trouble keeping up with the score without worrying about yardage and score by quarters. The Haven scoreboard had no room for triple digits.

"Everybody but our center scored," Koch said. "We tried to set it up for him to score. We gave him the ball, but by the time he crossed the goal line, he had dropped it."

Koch said substitution rules contributed to the top-heavy score. Coaches found it almost mandatory to play their starters most of the way.

"If you went out in the first half, you couldn't come back until the second half," Koch said. "And if they took you out in the second half, you were through for the game. We only had 21 or 22 players. We weren't doing much substituting. If we had, we would have been out of players."

Koch said Sylvia drove to the Haven 15 on an early possession.

"We held them and McCoy ran for a touchdown," Koch said. "From there on, we just kept going."

Koch said the Sylvia players were astonished by Haven's speed.

"One of them came up to me after the game and said, `What do you guys do on Saturdays - run down jackrabbits?' But they were good sports. It's too bad the game had to be so one-sided."

The previous record was 233 points by Stanton, Ill., in 1923. The highest college score was Georgia Tech's 222-0 victory over Cumberland (Tenn.) in 1916. The largest NFL score was the Chicago Bears' 73-0 victory over the Washington Redskins in the 1940 championship game.

Word of Haven's runaway romp was reported in papers throughout the country. The game was featured in Robert Ripley's nationally syndicated "Believe It or Not" and was later used by noted commentator Lowell Thomas on a national radio broadcast. It is frequently mentioned whenever one-sided games are reported.

With such a score, it's not surprising that several myths grew up about the game. One was that Sylvia had just started football and some players showed up in overalls and work boots.

"That's absolutely wrong," Gaston said. "Sylvia had been playing football for several years, and we had regular uniforms."

There is still a question about why the Sylvia coach chose to kick off instead of receive after Haven touchdowns. One theory was that his offense was giving up the ball so often on turnovers, he thought his team would be better off on defense.

Gaston said he knew a mismatch was coming from the start. Haven was much too powerful for Sylvia's lightweight, inexperienced team.

"We were supposed to play their second team," said Gaston. "It was written in the contract that way. When we saw their first team was out there, we walked off the field. When we were halfway to the dressing room, our coach talked us into going back out there."

Gaston was a 120-pound halfback.

"And I was about as big as anybody on our team. If we'd had anybody any bigger, I wouldn't have been playing."

Gaston said Haven had printed up its schedule on season tickets and included Sylvia as a varsity game.

"But it wasn't supposed to be a varsity game. I saw the contract. I don't like it when somebody goes back on their word. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now."