Preview 2010: Norton's Lane ready to roll

By CONOR NICHOLL

cnicholl@dailynews.net

NORTON — Terrell Lane grew up in Austin, Texas, and started to play organized tackle football in second grade. Lane’s parents had some trouble and the courts moved Lane to Norton to live with his grandmother.
Once he arrived, Lane heard Norton had a football team and wanted to play. He joined a group that went 0-6 in fourth grade, but showed promise. With Lane on the team, the boys won the state championship as sixth graders. Even then, Lane was a talented player who was physically bigger than everyone else.
“No one wanted to go up against him,” said Kaid McKenna, one of the original fourth graders and the Bluejays’ current starting center and linebacker. “It just seemed like I was always the person that got to go up against him. I believe it made me better as a football player, as a better person and an all-around better athlete.”
Years later, Lane has continued to help Norton win football games and keep alive the Bluejay tradition. In the last three seasons, Norton is 25-10, including a 9-4 mark and trip to the Class 3A sub-state championship game last fall, the Bluejays’ best postseason showing in 20 years.
The 5-foot-11, 220-pound rock solid Lane will enter his fourth season as a starter and already has signed with Butler County Community College. Goodland coach Kent Teeter said “you can put (Lane) on a good team and then they become a great team,” a sentiment echoed by other coaches.
“Lane is an explosive game-changer in all phases of the game,” Beloit’s Greg Koenig said. “His combination of size, speed, and strength, makes him very formidable.”
“He is an explosive, powerful back with playbreaking speed,” Scott City’s Glenn O’Neil said. “Defensive-wise, athletic, good size and flexible enough to a cover linebacker or a force player versus the sweep.”
Lane, a running back and linebacker, has rushed for 3,245 yards and 33 TDs in his career, including back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. Norton coach Lucas Melvin Lane puts Lane in rare company among the Bluejays’ all-time great players, a group that includes Terry Petrie and Neil Philpot. Petrie played for Kansas State University, while Philpot was MIAA MVP for Pittsburg State University.
“He can do some pretty good moves,” McKenna said. “I would say his best move is just running straight up the hole and running over anyone in his road. He can surprise some people. He surprised us one day in practice. He jumped over a kid that came to block him and the kid (fell) and it was pretty good.”
Lane, the cousin of Cincinnati Bengals running back Cedric Benson, is helped by occasional conversations with him — “he will give me little tips here and there, like what I need to do. I will send him texts every now and then” — Lane picked up 761 yards rushing as a freshman, then had 2,115 total yards (1,433 rushing) in 2008 to earn the first of back-to-back Hays Daily News Super 11 honors.
In the final game of 2008, Lane received a scare when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament in his knee. Lane first went to a doctor in Phillipsburg, who told the running back he had completely blown the knee and would never be able to run as fast or cut like he could. A worried Lane then saw a doctor in Kearney, Neb., had surgery and returned for 2009.
“He was like, man, we will get you faster and stronger,” Lane said. “Even if it’s not true, I like it better because it made me smile.”
Lane sprained his ankle in last year’s season opener. He couldn’t play offense in the first two games and wasn’t fully healthy until the sub-state title game versus Wichita Collegiate. Still, Lane finished with another dominant season that included 1,051 yards rushing, a career-high 6.6 yards per carry, and had seven rushing TDs. He rushed for 191 yards in a playoff contest versus Beloit.
“Couldn’t play offense, but I wasn’t going to quit on this team, so I just played defense,” Lane said of his early-season injury. “First game I actually felt healthy was Collegiate. Good now, ready to go.”