Athlete of the Week : Carter Darkens Crenshaw Day With 267 Yards

‘Twas, simply put, ‘Twan’s night.

Kennedy High tailback Ontiwaun Carter, whose friends call him ‘Twan for short, rushed for 267 yards in 40 carries and scored four touchdowns--all career highs--in Thursday night’s thrilling, 39-36, win over Crenshaw.

In this game, you see, Carter underscored the On in Ontiwaun, primarily because Crenshaw defenders kept bouncing off ‘Twan.

If you don’t see, or couldn’t, the line forms here.

In the second quarter, after gaining 102 yards in the first 12 minutes alone, Carter again found daylight. He broke through the line, then bolted toward the right corner of the end zone. The run was short-circuited, however, when a traffic accident on a nearby street knocked out power in the area surrounding Kennedy High.

What seemed destined to be a 21-yard scoring run ended when officials whistled the play dead as darkness enveloped the field. When the referees tried to locate the ball, Carter was standing in the end zone, triumphantly waving it above his head in the gloaming.

With tongue in cheek, Kennedy assistant Craig Raub told officials that since Crenshaw had been unable to stop Carter with the lights on, that the score should stand. No lights, no dice, they said.

As it turns out, the blackout probably cost Carter the school single-game rushing record of 279 yards, set by Edwin Jones (Iowa State) in a 1986 game against Cleveland and star tailback Albert Fann. Michael Pringle, now leading the Big West Conference in rushing as a starter at Cal State Fullerton, is second with 274 yards.

A scant few hours before his finest game, Carter’s own lights were out. Sick with the flu, he showed up for an after-school screening of a Crenshaw game film feeling like his head was in a vise and his stomach was in a Cuisinart.

“The kids knew he was sick all day,” Kennedy Coach Bob Francola said. “I didn’t find out until sixth period. When he walked in, he looked like hell. He said he’d finally gotten rid of the headache, but that he was dizzy and felt like he was going to throw up.

“I told him, ‘Do whatever you have to do, ‘Twan, but get ready to carry the ball 30 times tonight.”

After the screening, Carter caught a few winks at the home of quarterback Tony Vazquez, and it was a good thing he did. By the end of the third quarter, Carter had already carried 31 times. Yet because of the success Kennedy was having on the ground, Francola said it would have been crazy to stop calling Carter’s number.

“I really didn’t intend to run him that much,” Francola said. “But they weren’t stopping us. We ran five, maybe six different plays all game. We just flip-flopped them to different sides.”

Said Carter, whose stomach was still flip-flopping: “We’d score, then they’d score. I’d keep saying to myself, ‘We can’t lose this one.’ I was gasping for air and I felt pretty bad, but I wanted to stay in there.”

Carter said that the pace of the seesaw game, in which Kennedy scored nine points in the final 17 seconds to steal a victory, even wore down the officials.

“I had a lot of fun with those guys,” said Carter, who scored from nine, 14, one and nine yards. “They said they couldn’t keep track of the clock because we were going too fast.”

And fast is the key word here. Carter, who has brilliant outside speed, left several Crenshaw players with nothing more than a handful of crabgrass and chalk. Maybe that’s where this see-saw business comes in. I see him . . . I saw him . . . touchdown.

After three games, Carter leads area City Section rushers with 572 yards and is averaging 7.0 yards a carry. Even though the Golden Cougars (1-2) have struggled, Carter has rushed for more than 100 yards in all three games, a noteworthy feat in that he often lines up in a single-back set.

“When I look at this game, I don’t want people to think that it was just Ontiwaun,” said Carter, a 5-foot-11, 170-pound junior. “I don’t want other high schools to think it’s just me they have to worry about. But if teams can’t stop us on those couple of plays, then, heck, yeah , I’m with it.”

Which means, for defenses, that what you see is what you get. It’s basic stuff--pitch right, dive left, option right, blast left--unless the lights aren’t on.

But many folks like Carter even more when the lights are out. Well, some do, anyway.

“Last year,” Francola said, “there were a lot of college recruiters who saw him on film, switched off the projector after a couple of minutes and said, ‘We’ll be back in two years.’ ”