Christian Villarreal is a kid you’ve never heard of, from a town you’ve never heard of, who is on pace to break Texas high school football’s unbreakable record. 

The stats are mind-boggling. Villarreal, a senior running back from Class 2A Ozona, has rushed for 1,772 yards and 23 touchdowns in five games. He averages 17.9 yards per carry and 354.4 yards per game. If he keeps this pace, Villarreal will rush for 4,253 yards in 12 games, which would surpass Sugar Land quarterback Kenneth Hall’s 4,045 yards in the 1953 season, the only player to ever hit the 4,000-yard mark.

But the story behind the stats is the kind of tall tale that can only be found in Texas high school football. Oh, the myths we can make when these games aren’t streamed nationally, and the first introduction most get to these players is through whispers of, “Yeah, but have you heard of this kid?”

It happened with Hall, who, over four seasons from 1950 to 1953, went from a 6-2, 205-pound high school athlete who could run a 9.7 100-meter dash to “The Sugar Land Express.” It happened with Midland Lee running back Cedric Benson, whose three-peat state championship run coincided with the early days of the internet. And now it’s happening with Villarreal as he runs down a record that’s stood for seven decades, just seven months after Hall passed away. 

Villarreal’s story begins in Ozona, a West Texas town of roughly 2,500 people, located at least two hours away from all of the state’s top 25 most populous cities. The perfect place for a Paul Bunyan tale. Villarreal has led the Ozona Lions to their first 5-0 start since 2002. 

Standing 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds in Texas high school football’s smallest 11-man classification, Villarreal is bigger and stronger than the linemen and faster than the safeties. He’s Class 2A's Derrick Henry.

Ozona head coach Jason Pitts sends his coaching buddies Villarreal’s game film to prove he’s not crazy for the way he speaks about him. When he first takes the handoff, Villarreal is patient to the point of tip-toeing behind the line of scrimmage. Once he finds the lane, his acceleration is so smooth you don’t realize how fast he’s going until you see how defenders move in quicksand around him. It all looks so effortless until a would-be tackler pops up in Villarreal’s peripheral vision.

In their last game against Miles, Pitts threw his hands up in the touchdown celebration after Villarreal broke off a 60-yard run, only to look back at the field and see Villarreal down at the five-yard line because he veered toward two defenders to truck them instead of waltzing into the end zone. 

“He doesn’t run like almost anybody I’ve seen,” Pitts said. “I coached Jamarion Miller, who’s playing at Bama. That kid’s a freak and he’s going to get drafted to the NFL. But Christian runs differently from him. He’s always looking for contact.”

Villarreal runs angrily, but his mother, Patricia, watches him nervously. 

“I’m like, ‘Just go down, son, please!’” Patricia said.

Patricia has one daughter in college and one daughter who’s about to turn 10. But Christian, sandwiched in between them, is her only son. She still refers to him as her baby even though he towers over her. 

Christian has received some college attention during this senior year, which tugs his heart in two different directions. Playing collegiate sports has always been his goal. But since his father, Johnny, passed away four years ago, his priority has become taking care of his family. That family is rooted in Ozona, where his mother is a librarian at the elementary school.

“He doesn’t really want to go too far away from her,” Pitts said. “He’s one of those kids who feels like he’s going to take care of his mom. She’s not an old lady or anything. She can take care of herself. But he’s been the man of the house for so long, and he’s such a big dude that he’s her protector.”

Growing up, Johnny brought Christian along every weekend to do landscaping work for his company, Johnny’s Lawn and Tree Service. After Johnny’s death, his clients called Christian and said they’d pay him to continue the yard work. So, Christian took over his father’s business at the age of 14 to provide for his family. 

“His dad always told him that if something happened to him, Christian would be the man of the house,” Patricia said. “He’d have to take care of me and his little sister. He took that responsibility to heart.”

Johnny was Christian’s biggest fan. He had his son playing his two favorite sports, football and baseball, from first grade on. Patricia remembers how Johnny would walk around town bragging about his son to anybody who would listen, or yelling from the stands that the coaches needed to give the ball to Christian.

Christian doesn’t remember much of this, because Johnny knew that Christian’s motor ran on trash talk.

“He would be on the fence just yelling at me during games, telling me I sucked,” Christian remembers with a laugh. “He was trying to get me to go even harder.”

Even now, Christian searches for slights to motivate himself. The issue now is that opponents no longer dish them out. Everyone just congratulates him, telling him to go do big things. His father’s cajoling at the fence has been replaced by the townsfolk who line up to watch mid-week practices. But his father’s directive to be the man of the house is a more powerful motivation than trash talk ever was. 

Christian’s strength allows him to break tackles that would bring down most kids. That strength is both physical and mental. He has muscles from years of landscaping work that most don’t. He also has a purpose that most don’t. College football can bring a degree, and a path to provide even more for his family than he already has. Perhaps he runs so violently because he sees every defender as not just trying to tackle him, but to tackle that dream. 

So far, no one has been able to.