As a senior Tony Fisher was the TD machine

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Tony Fisher was Euclid's next great running back.
Even if he never got a chance to show it as a junior in 1996.
"There was a lot riding on my senior year," he says now.
An injury-wrecked '96 season gave the successor to Robert Smith andPepe Pearson in the Panthers' decade-long parade of Division Irunning backs a new outlook as a senior.
He had to show that his 1,633-yard, 20-touchdown season as asophomore was no fluke. And he had some convincing to do with thecollege recruiters, some of whom had lost interest after he ran for608 yards while battling leg injuries as a junior.
Instead of replicating his sensational sophomore season, Fisher hada senior year to rival Smith's for-the-ages 1989 season (when thelatter won his second consecutive Mr. Football award).
Fisher ran for 1,920 yards and averaged 11.7 yards per carry (Smithhad totals of 2,042 and 10.1 as a senior) in the regular season.
But it was another number - Fisher's 37 regular-season touchdowns -that an area player probably won't equal or surpass for a longtime.
Fisher's total is six better than all-time area runners-up Smith(1989) and Hawken's Matt Koren (2002), each of whom scored 31 TDsas seniors.
In area history, only six players have come within 10 touchdowns ofFisher's 37 in the regular season, and Smith and Koren are the onlytwo with more than 29.
"That's an average of 3.7 touchdowns a game - that's prettyimpressive," said Tom Banc, who coached Smith, Pearson and Fisherduring a productive 15-year tenure as Euclid's head coach from1985-99. "I don't think 20 or 25 carries (per game) would do it. Inthis day and age with the spread offenses, more and more teams arethrowing the ball. It would have to be broken by a team that reliedexclusively on the ground attack.
"That's going to be a very difficult one to top."
Mentor offensive coordinator Don Andersen, who won 135 games in 19seasons as a head coach at Riverside, knows a thing or two aboutthe spread offenses of today.
All of which makes him believe Fisher's 37 touchdowns will standthe test of time.
"You would really have to be a run-oriented team to do anythinglike that," Andersen said. "You obviously would have to have a verygifted tailback, too, which he was. I don't see anybody gettingclose to that. Teams don't run the ball that much and have thattype of guy who constantly grinds it out anymore."
Euclid had that in Fisher, even if his junior year said otherwise.
"I had a great deal to prove just because I didn't want to be oneof those guys who had one good year and fell off the planet,"Fisher said of his senior season. "I went through a whole stretchmy junior year when I wasn't healthy. When I was healthy, I put upnumbers, so I had a little momentum going into my senior year.
"My main goal was to show I was healthy. A lot of colleges didn'tknow if I could stay healthy, and I had to prove I was open and I'mready to do business."
If "business" meant rushing for 2,120 yards and scoring 40touchdowns in 11 games (of which Euclid won nine), joining Smith asthe area's second Mr. Football honoree and earning a scholarship toNotre Dame (after turning down Ohio State and Michigan), businesswas good.
So good Fisher set area regular-season records for yards per carry(11.7), points (224) and touchdowns.
How unbreakable is the latter number?
In the last five seasons, Kirtland's Rossi Santo (who had 26 in2007) is the only area player to score 25 TDs or more in theregular season.
Even former Chagrin Falls standout and current Detroit Lion SeanMcHugh - the area's all-time rushing leader - never scored morethan 25 touchdowns in a season.
Don't tell that to Fisher, who went on to play five seasons in theNFL with the Packers and Rams from 2002-06 before sitting out lastseason while recovering from a torn ACL (he hopes to get a chancewith a team in training camp this summer).
"Every record is meant to be broken. There's going to be somelittle back who is going to get in there and break it," Fisher saidwith a laugh. "All the records Robert put up were pretty muchuntouchable, and I was able to come along and beat some of hismarks. So you never know what can happen."
If it were to happen, it probably wouldn't be a "little back" whoscored 37 touchdowns in 10 games.
It would take, as former Shaker Heights coach Dave Sedmak said inreference to Fisher, "almost a freak of a nature. ... Tony wasincredible."
Said St. Ingnatius coach Chuck Kyle: "He was a strong back. I meanhe would just knock you over. And the idea of tackling himone-on-one was an issue. Definitely an issue."
Especially in 1997.
Fisher ran like a man who had a point to prove.
Instead of falling "off the planet," he set a touchdown record thatmight have a permanent place in area history.
Correspondent Eddie Dwyer contributed to this story.