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Daniels

Daniels takes AHSAA Spotlight

Contributed

Tallassee High School junior running back Jalyn Daniels had touchdown runs of 99 and 89 yards in the span of just over three minutes last week in the third quarter of the Tigers’ Class 5A, Region 4 high school football battle with Elmore County.

Those two big plays stretched a precarious 21-14 lead to 35-14 and Tallassee rolled to its first victory of the season winning 49-21. Daniels also burst into the AHSAA Football Spotlight for Week 4 of the 2020 season with his outstanding performance.

The 5-foot-10, 160-pound junior finished with 349 rushing yards and five touchdowns on 20 carries. He dashed his way into the AHSAA Record Book with his 99-yard run with 6:51 left in the third quarter. He almost equaled that effort with 3:21 left in the period when he scored on his 89-yard run. His other TD runs covered 5, 27 and 37 yards.

The 99-yard run from scrimmage, the maximum distance possible officially in a high school football game, made him the 17th player in AHSAA history since 1972 to accomplish that feat, according to the AHSAA Record Book, and the first since Geneva’s Kahari McReynolds ran 99 yards for a TD versus Samson and Emmanuel Henderson of Geneva County sped the same distance for a TD versus the same school in 2019. McReynolds also had a 99-yard interception return in the same game, a 40-28 win over Samson.

Tallassee and Elmore County combined for 899 total yards, 524 by Tallassee and 375 by Elmore County. Coach Mike Battles’ Tigers averaged 13.4 yards on just 39 total plays. Payton Stephenson was 14-of-23 passing for 170 yards and rushed 24 times for 129 yards for the Panthers.