Oct 12, 2022 3 min read

Name: Landan Stevenson

School: Mapletown

Class: Senior

Sport: Football

Stevenson’s week: The running back from Mapletown High School rushed for 314 yards and scored four touchdowns in the Maples’ 49-12 victory over Jefferson-Morgan in a Class A Tri-County South Conference game. He also kicked an extra point and scored a two-point conversion.

The 314 rushing yards are second on the school’s list of single-game achievements. Dylan Rush holds the single-game rushing record at Mapletown and in the WPIAL at 524 yards in a 2017 victory over Avella. He also scored seven touchdowns in that game. Rush holds the school’s career rushing record of 5,762 yards.

“The numbers mean a lot to me but they don’t too,” Stevenson said. “As long as we win, that’s all that matters. At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t putting up the biggest numbers. But we were running through teams and I was just happy getting the win. It feels amazing to still be undefeated this far into the season. This group is special. We went undefeated in junior high and we’ve always put up good numbers.”

The Maples are in first place in the conference at 4-0, and are 7-0 overall for the first time since 1968.

Heavy workload: Stevenson also had a season-high 35 carries against Jefferson-Morgan. Stevenson scored on runs of three, 34, six and eight yards. He leads the WPIAL, all classifications, with 23 touchdowns and 24 conversion points and one field goal for 165 points, 51 points more than the second-place scorer.

Stevenson is second in the WPIAL, all classifications, in rushing yards. Colin Brady of West Greene is first with 1,471 yards.

“I didn’t know I was in that territory,” Stevenson said of his 314-yard effort. “I looked back at it and I saw that I had almost 200 yards at halftime. I thought I was in the 170 or 180 yards at the end of the game.”

Stevenson broke his own single-game record of 282 yards set last year against California.

Stevenson, who now has 5,084 career yards, had a full game’s worth of stats in just the first half: 20 carries, 192 yards and three touchdowns.

“He had a great game last week,” said Mapletown head coach George Messich. “It was a typical game for Landan. He was picking up six and seven yards per carry. He carries two or three kids with him. For his size (5-11, 180), he’s extremely strong.”

Compiled by Joe Tuscano