Several Badger athletes reach
Yosemite High milestones
Alec Campbell, Shawn Long, Jon Blea and Karra Blate all break Yosemite High School records

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In the American sports culture, certain levels of production are recognized as milestones of a great season or career. The number 1,000 is such a milestone.

The running back for the football team, senior Alec Campbell, rushed for over 1,000 yards this season and joined an elite club of former Badgers including varsity running back coach, Phil Bransetter; junior varsity coach, Bonner Cummins; Vic Mendez; J.D. Burnett (now head coach at Frazier Mountain High School), Roosevelt Cooks (playing at Nevada Reno) and Quint Brown (playing at Monterey Peninsula College).

Campbell fell short of the mark by 60 yards as a junior when he shared running back duties with T.J. Grijalva. After dedicating himself this season to becoming the featured back, Campbell finished the season with 1,405 yards, capping it with a dominating performance in the finals against Fresno with more than 200 yards.

While the other backs played in a dominantly run offense, Campbell was just part of an explosive balanced offense in which quarterback Shawn Long was able to throw for more than 2000 yards in each of the last two seasons, setting school records each time.

The quarterback finished with 2,512 yards, second in the section. Long had a 22-4 mark as a starter and led his team to two CIF finals. He is the only member of the Badgers 2,000 yards passing club.

Another exclusive member of a milestone club is receiver Jon Blea, who as a junior this season became the first Badger in school history to surpass 1,000 yards in receiving yardage in a season. Blea had 1,175 yards and eight touchdowns and has developed into one of the top receivers in Central California.

In basketball action, Karras Blate, shooting guard on the defending CIF champion Lady Badgers, topped the 1,000 point career mark in her sixth game this season.

Only two boys basketball players have scored as many points in a varsity career, Rael Lang (1988-91) with 1,491 total points and Travis Ressler (2000-02) with 1,028. With 20 or more games left in the season, Blate has an outside chance of breaking Lang’s career mark.