Derby has heart set
on playing quarterback
By Andy Hamilton
Iowa City Press-Citizen
Mark Reiland remembers the numbers.
The numbers A.J. Derby produced in seventh grade were so preposterous, so Nintendo-like that his junior high football coach still has them burned into his memory five years later.
“Statistically, it was freakish,” Reiland said. “He scored 27 touchdowns in five games, and two of them were on defense. If I remember right, his 25 touchdown runs were like 1,080 yards, and that was just on his touchdown runs. It was borderline illegal to even play him.”
But Reiland tried to be humane to opponents while Derby turned Northwest Junior High football games into a spectacle. Derby rarely touched the football in second halves and hardly ever carried on first or second down.
Derby averaged a touchdown every third carry and had three runs of 90 yards or more.
“It wasn’t even fair,” said John Chelf, who still hears about the time he got stiff-armed to the turf trying to make a tackle while Derby kept running. “He was the biggest, fastest and by far the strongest player on the field.”
Derby was 6-feet-2 and 175 pounds in seventh grade with the bloodlines of a former All-Big Ten linebacker as his father, and he was in desperate need of a higher level of competition.
“He was the fastest guy on the field and kids were afraid to tackle him, for the most part,” Reiland said. “He had the most speed, so if he got to the outside they weren’t going to catch him.”
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