Liam Taylor has been bracing himself for this. It whirls through his mind that this will be the last time he will wear shoulder pads. It will be the last time he will put on a football helmet. The last time he will practice. The last time he will play football. <\/p>\n
The 5-foot-10, 190-pound Haverford<\/a> High School senior tailback admits he has been taking mental snapshots, trying to inhale each fleeting moment, before they fade past his eyes from light to shadow. The thoughts paralyze him sometimes.<\/p>\n Then he catches himself with this: He is on the verge of something special Thursday in the Fords\u2019 traditional Thanksgiving Day game at Central League rival Upper Darby<\/a> at 10 a.m. Only two players have ever rushed for more than 5,700 career yards in the long history of Delaware County<\/a> high school football. Taylor is one of them. The other is former Cardinal O\u2019Hara star Kevin Jones, the 2004 NFL first-round draft choice who now is a professor at his alma mater, Virginia Tech.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: North Catholic beat Frankford on Thanksgiving in 1978. It\u2019s a victory the Norphans haven\u2019t forgotten.<\/a><\/p>\n On Thursday, Taylor will need 79 yards to break Jones\u2019 Delaware County career rushing record of 5,790 yards. Taylor enters the game with 5,712 career yards after establishing the single-season Delaware County record \u2014 previously held by Interboro graduate Abu Kamara (2,832) \u2014 when he rushed for 3,006 yards last season as a junior.<\/p>\n Against eight- and nine-man defensive fronts designed to stop him this season, Taylor has been \u201cheld\u201d to 1,950 yards rushing this year.<\/p>\n Breaking the record will not be easy, Taylor says. Not only will Upper Darby try everything to stop him from surpassing that mark, but it also will be his last football game. He has opted, despite recruiting attention from numerous colleges, to not play football beyond Thursday.<\/p>\n He realizes he will be saying goodbye to a part of himself.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the hard part,\u201d he said. \u201cI look forward to practice. I have been playing football for 10 years, since I was in second grade. When I think about it, other than going to school for 12 years, it is the longest thing I have ever done in my life. It\u2019s why I am looking forward to this Thanksgiving Day game. This will be like a backyard game you play with your friends after school. When we lost to Council Rock South [27-7 in the opening round of the District 1 Class 6A playoffs on Oct. 31 in Newtown], that hit hard. I know we had one more game to play. But it was a long bus ride back. We didn\u2019t play any music.<\/p>\n \u201cI love football. I\u2019m trying to savor everything right now. Last year and this year have been a lot of fun. I decided over the spring not to play in college. I\u2019ll miss it, and I am not fully over it. I never really gave it a thought of playing college football. It was difficult to make the decision, but I definitely would not call it an internal civil war, because I knew what I wanted. Every Saturday morning waking up after games was a very sore day. It was definitely a part of my decision. It was not a huge part of it. It\u2019s hard to let something you love go. I\u2019m ready for it, though.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Rivals Northeast and Central believe their Thanksgiving football game, like the game\u2019s trophy, is worth saving<\/a><\/p>\n Taylor said posting stats such as his does not happen without help. He noted he would not be going anywhere without senior tackles Rocco Kelleher and Oliver Clune, senior guard Brendan Walker, junior guard Joe McGinley, senior center Emmet Gillespie, and rotating senior tackle and guard Liam McCloskey.<\/p>\n Haverford coach Luke Dougherty has been the buffer for incoming colleges interested in Taylor. Dougherty, who is in his fifth season at the helm and eighth overall with the program, had to tell coaches his star player was not interested in playing college football.<\/p>\n After his junior year, Taylor, who carries a weighted 4.7 GPA, was attracting Patriot and Ivy League attention. As this season progressed, Taylor has only strengthened his resolve not to play college football, Dougherty said. It gave Taylor a newfound freedom on the field, playing without feeling the scrutiny of college recruiters.<\/p>\n \u201cLiam can easily play college football at a lot of places, and when we revisited his decision in early October, he told me, \u2018Coach, I am dead set on my decision not to play college football. I\u2019m loving this,\u2019\u201d Dougherty said. \u201cThe Patriots and Ivys all liked Liam, but it never reached the formal offering process because by that time, when he did not go to any of the college camps he was invited to, word was out. Penn came here for Liam. Cornell came in three or four times. Bucknell came to the building.<\/p>\n \u201cCollege coaches are a little different. They can\u2019t understand someone as talented as Liam not wanting to play college football. Coaches are still coming in asking, \u2018Is Liam still not interested in playing college football?\u2019 It was shock for a lot of these guys.<\/p>\n \u201cPenn\u2019s [offensive line coach] Kyle Metzler, who recruits our area, probably said it best when he told me, \u2018There are a lot of people who go to really good schools who don\u2019t play football and make a lot of money in this world. God bless Liam, he knows what he wants, because we have too many guys at Penn who come here thinking that they have a meal ticket to the NFL and we try to convince them that they\u2019re here for the four-year Penn education. This isn\u2019t a transfer portal launching pad.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Many schools still left their information for Dougherty in case Taylor changed his mind. Taylor has not changed his mind. He wants to go to Georgia, his the alma mater of his father, Eric.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been playing football for 10 years … it is the longest thing I have ever done in my life. It\u2019s why I am looking forward to this Thanksgiving Day game. This will be like a backyard game you play with your friends after school.\u201d<\/p>\n Liam Taylor said of playing his final football game<\/p>\n Special motivation<\/p>\n