Memorial football's Cole Birkhead throws school-record 7 TDs in opener - Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

Six of those seven touchdowns came before halftime. By the end of the second quarter, the Mavericks had built a 47-22 lead, turning what could have been a tight opener into a statement. For first-year head coach Ross Dillard, that kind of cushion on opening night is about as good a start as any new coach can ask for.

Birkhead, a senior, carved up the Paschal defense methodically in those first two quarters. Seven touchdown passes in a single game is the kind of number that usually shows up in video game sliders set to the wrong difficulty. It now lives in the program record book after just one game.

Fans who packed Memorial Stadium watched a quarterback put together one of the biggest individual performances in school history before most of them had finished their nachos. Fort Worth Paschal is not a pushover program, which makes the margin even harder to ignore.

Dillard gets his first win as Memorial's head coach, Birkhead gets the record, and the rest of Lubbock's football season now has a very early benchmark to measure against.