Like thousands of Texans, Gary Parrish purchases a Dave Campbell's Texas Football every summer.

Before he became Henrietta High School's principal, Parrish was the Bearcats' football coach for a decade.

But the biggest reason he picks up the extensive preview magazine is to see his son's name in agate-size font at the back of the publication.

In a 1995 district game, Brian Parrish set a state record with 48 completions in a 45-24 loss against Electra.

That record has stood for 13 years despite the evolution of the spread formation and the emergence of pass-happy offenses popping up all the way from Muleshoe to Marshall.

But is that really a record or has it mysteriously masqueraded as one this past decade?

According to Nick Gholson's game story in the Oct. 14, 1995, edition of the Times Record News, Parrish completed 30-of-48 passes for 424 yards and three touchdowns.

That's an impressive stat line today. It grows in stature when the time and place — Henrietta has never been known for its aerial prowess — is considered.

But it's not a record, not even close. Parrish, however, is adamant he completed 48 passes that night.

-------

The logical reasoning for the mix-up is that somewhere down the line, Parrish's total attempts were confused with his completions.

But where would that mistake have happened? How state records are compiled, especially during the pre-Internet era, can be a murky process.

Bill McMurray published multiple books listing Texas high school records before retiring from the Houston Chronicle in 1996.

Back then, most of his research consisted of thumbing through about 25 Texas newspapers every high school football weekend. But he also received several calls weekly from writers, coaches and even parents inquiring if certain feats were possible records.

McMurray, who doesn't recall the details surrounding Parrish's situation, obviously didn't get the stats from the TRN.

Bearcats coach Randy Romines said he wasn't aware of the record until after he left Henrietta a few years later.

Parrish thought his yardage total might put him in elite company, but didn't realize his completion total was tops until he saw it in Texas Football. So neither of them reported it,

When McMurray retired, Joe Lee Smith completely took over the task and is regarded as the state's premier historian of high school football.

"Anytime you deal with state records, it's difficult to get them all correct," Smith said from his home in Bullard. "Researching is so difficult. These kinds of things happen."

It wouldn't be the first time a record was erroneous.

Smith said New Deal's Shayne Boyd once held a state mark for most touchdown catches in a season with 33.

It was recently discovered that New Deal didn't even score 33 touchdowns in 1987. The total came from the touchdowns Boyd had accumulated before entering his senior year.

However, Parrish is insistent his record is correct.

"I know I threw more passes than that," Parrish said. "I saw the stat sheets, and I remember how sore my arm was after the game."

Parrish recalls his stat line like it happened yesterday — 48 completions on 60 attempts. He said there were a couple other games during his two years at quarterback where he had 26 or 28 completions.

"Those games were nothing like that one," he said.

Gholson, this newspaper's longtime sports editor, stands by his stats. Any writer will fess up to an occasional miscalculation in the heat of deadlines, but nothing remotely this egregious.

Mark Bateman, who was Electra's coach then, admitted being a little shocked last week when told Parrish had set a state record against his Tigers.

He seemed not as surprised when the completion total from the paper was discovered a few days later.

"That sounds more legit than 48," Bateman said. "What I remember most was that they had a ton of yards passing, and we had a ton of yards rushing."

-------

Parrish is now a cardiology clinical pharmacist at the Methodist Hospital of Texas Medical Center in Houston.

The 31-year-old earned a doctorate from Southwestern Oklahoma State and has spent the past six years assisting patients with their heart medications.

Parrish never played college football, but he did spend a semester playing baseball at Gainesville's North Central Texas College. He also was on the rugby team at SWOSU for four years.

Now he's part of a more significant team, spending much of his job going bedside to bedside, working with cardiologists and hospital attendants to determine patients' needs.

Back when he played football, Parrish was blessed with efficient route runners with great hands like Darin Wheeler and John Belcher.

That enabled Romines — who succeeded Gary Parrish as coach before the 1994 season — to spread out opposing defenses, even with an empty backfield at times.

It was Romines' belief that no school had enough defensive backs to keep the Bearcats at bay. The style of offense wasn't the norm, but it produced points.

"When Randy took over, he just gave me the ball and opened it up," Parrish said. "We threw the ball probably 75 percent of the time."

The Bearcats jumped out to a 4-0 start in '95, but they were coming off a loss to Archer City in their second District 9-2A contest.

Injuries were devastating to Henrietta's defense, and playing Parrish on the other side of the ball was too much of a liability.

"We couldn't stop anybody on the defensive side," said Romines, whose team allowed Terry Monroe to rack up 295 rushing yards in Electra's win. "Losing the game was the hardest part, and it was the start of our downfall."

Parrish could have easily surpassed the 500-yard mark in that defeat if not for penalties. An illegal shift nullified a long touchdown pass. The boxscore shows that the Bearcats were whistled nine times for 70 yards.

Henrietta wound up dropping five of their last six games, but the sputtering finish doesn't seem to bother the coach as much as the snubs Parrish received as a senior.

To this day, it still irritates Romines that no college program showed real interest in him. West Texas A&M and North Texas were two colleges that flirted with Parrish, but they eventually shied away because of his size.

"If he had come along 5-8 years later, he would have played big-time college football somewhere," said Romines, who is an assistant at Callisburg now. "He had all the tools, and his execution was just flawless. He was born before his time.

"It was a shame, but it was meant to be."

-------

If Gary Parrish picks up next year's Dave Campbell's Texas Football, it sounds like his son's name has a good chance of being omitted.

Smith provides the old unofficial records for the magazine, and he is satisfied with the most reliable evidence — the game story from an unbiased reporter with decades in the business.

"That pretty well clarifies it for me," he said.

If that's the case, the record would go to Laredo Alexander's Jerry Lopez, who completed 46 passes last season against Laredo Martin in a 70-35 victory. Lopez's touchdown total (eight) is also tied for first, and his yardage from that contest (591 yards) is second all-time.

There's only one way to accurately confirm how many completions Parrish had. But does a videotape of the game even exist almost 14 years later?

Romines is pretty confident Henrietta doesn't have a copy from that October night.

"Back then, we had one tape (of a game) and we probably recorded over it two weeks later," he said.

Bateman, now an assistant coach at Vernon, said there's a chance Electra still has one. And he kept lots of stat sheets from back then, so those might be lying around somewhere.

Parrish has watched the game since it happened, so possibly an old friend or acquaintance has a VHS tape collecting dust in a closet.

This much we know. Parrish was a very good 2A quarterback who has accomplished even greater things with his life.

The record may be taken away, but that can't be touched.