McGrorty rushes closer to records

By KRIS HENRY
Mail Tribune

HELENA, Mont. — Somewhat overshadowed by Southern Oregon’s season-ending loss to Carroll College on Saturday was the season put together by Dusty McGrorty.

The 6-foot, 215-pounder from Warrenton solidified his role as one of the top running backs in school history, and still has another season of eligibility to go.

With 27 carries for 161 yards and two rushing touchdowns on Saturday, McGrorty moved a few steps closer to affixing his name atop almost every rushing category in school history.

In the 2002 season, the junior established school marks in rushing attempts for a season (291) and for a career (724). He rumbled for 1,560 yards — fourth most in SOU history — to help the Raiders post their seventh straight 1,000-yard rusher.

He also rushed for 16 TDs, averaging 5.4 yards per carry and 156 yards per game.

Making those numbers more mesmerizing is the fact that McGrorty missed 1½ games due to a knee injury. Upon his return, his left knee still was only at about 50 percent, yet he barely missed a beat in guiding the Raiders to the quarterfinals of the NAIA Championship Series.

"What else can you say about Dusty?" pondered SOU coach Jeff Olson following Saturday’s loss. "He’s just an amazing competitor."

With 3,712 yards rushing in three seasons, McGrorty needs only 848 yards in 2003 to surpass Griff Yates (4,559) as the school’s career rushing leader.

With 53 rushing touchdowns and 57 overall for 342 career points, McGrorty needs five rushing TDs and four overall to eclipse Yates’ top marks in all three categories (57, 60, 360).

All of those marks are reachable considering McGrorty’s history of 1,000-yard success, and the fact that he has run for at least 15 scores in all three of his seasons at SOU.

THE NAIA can expect to hear from Olson any day now following the fiasco known as Saturday’s officiating.

At the heart of the issue is a total lack of communication between game officials and Olson, as well as the questioning of a handful of calls against SOU.

Olson pleaded with the side official time after time to get information on penalties, and was either rebuffed or flatly ignored for the most part.

"There were some interesting calls or non-calls today," said the usually mild-mannered Olson. "I’m certainly not going to blame everything on the officials, but they certainly had an impact on the game today."

While every game has officiating calls that are missed or incorrect, Saturday’s officiating was, in the mildest of terms, curious.

The Saints were penalized twice in the first half, once on a defensive personal foul and once on a personal foul by their special teams.

Despite facing a hard-charging Raider rush, Carroll College was flagged for its first holding penalty with about six minutes to go in the third quarter. The Saints’ only other penalty of the third quarter came via an offsides call against their defense with 1:28 to go.

The odd penalties, including a handful of pass interference calls against SOU, and other non-calls when Raiders were continually hit after plays were over, were cause for concern the whole day.

It got so bad Olson cried out along the SOU sideline for the NAIA’s game committee representative, who was supposed to be with each team for two quarters.

Unfortunately, the representative in question was busy hob-nobbing on the Saints’ sideline for the entire game, with his Carroll hat keeping him warm.

Reach reporter Kris Henry at 776-4488, or e-mail khenry@mailtribune.com