John Hadl played football for Lawrence High. Yet Hadl, who was one of the top professional quarterbacks of his era, doesn’t even belong in the conversation when the topic is the best high school quarterbacks in the history of Lawrence.
Ryan Murphy, who will try to keep his Free State High team undefeated when he leads the Firebirds onto the Haskell Stadium field for a game against cross-town rival Lawrence High, does belong in it.
“If you just want to talk about pure athletic ability, that kid ranks right up there,” LHS coach Dirk Wedd said of Murphy. “He’s got tremendous quickness and speed. He’s very elusive. He’s an above-average thrower for a high school quarterback. He doesn’t miss. What really scares you, when you pressure him, he really keeps his eyes downfield. He’s got outstanding instincts. He’s a football player. He’s the epitome of what a high school quarterback should be. I don’t know what his completion percentage is (56 percent), but if he had all his drops, he’d probably be 70 percent.”
Still, Wedd isn’t ready to call Murphy the best in Lawrence history.
“I think a quarterback leads his team to a state championship, so right there, the verdict’s out,” Wedd said. “I think a quarterback starts in the huddle and takes it to the line of scrimmage, and he makes all 10 people around him better. He (Murphy) does all those things, but he didn’t lead his team to a state title.”
Not yet, anyway.
Some other names who belong in the conversation in which Hadl doesn’t belong?
“I would say my quarterback in high school, Larry Dillon,” Wedd said. “He didn’t have great stats, but he was unbelievable. He walked on at KU. The ’66 team had a kid named Chip Maxwell who could throw and run. He was a real good one.”
Who else?
“Lance Flachsbarth was unbelievable,” Wedd said. “He was a huge kid. He was about a 6-5, 220-pound kid.”
Wedd appeared to save his favorite for last.
“In ’93 we won a state championship with Brad Romme, a very special quarterback who could run and throw,” Wedd said of the athlete who played baseball for Kansas University. “If he hadn’t played on such a great team with so many great players, he would have unbelievable stats. He probably would have been like a 1,000-yard rusher and a 2,000-yard passer. Then again, he played for coach (Dick) Purdy, so he wasn’t going to throw for 2,000 yards.”
Given a historic preference for the run, it’s difficult to quantify an LHS quarterback’s value. After all, they usually hand off the football, right?
“That’s not necessarily the case,” Wedd said. “For example, in ’93 we were down 23-0 to Derby in the state championship game at halftime. Romme came back and threw three touchdown passes and ran for a touchdown, and that’s probably the greatest individual performance I’ve ever seen in high school football. It was truly an amazing quarterback performance. It was not just a game, it was a state championship game, so the team across the field was pretty darn good. Derby was undefeated coming into the game.”
Romme belongs in the conversation that Hadl doesn’t belong in. So why doesn’t Hadl belong? Hadl was a halfback in high school.
