For Brock Grigsby and the rest of the head coaches in District 11-2A DII, the name ‘Kaegan Ash’ sends a shiver down their spine faster than his 10.8-second 100-meter dash. 

“I’ve been seeing this cat for four years, and I am so ready for him to graduate,” Grigsby said. “He’s unbelievable, man. The best I’ve ever coached against.” 

Grigsby’s four-year nightmare began in 2022, his first year as Alto’s head coach. His Yellowjackets had a homecoming game against 1-9 Mount Enterprise. The Wildcats were starting eight freshmen on each side of the ball, which should’ve made their Slot-T, exclusively run-based offense easy to stop. After all, most of Alto’s players were four years older. 

But as the game wore on, the celebration morphed into an ominous foreshadowing of what was to come. Mount Enterprise’s freshman running back Kaegan Ash was a freakin’ ball player. Alto won the game, but Ash finished with 260 yards.

“I ripped our defensive coordinator a new one,” Grigsby said. “I was beside myself. It’s homecoming, we’ve got all these people here. We’re supposed to win this game. And we can’t tackle this kid. Looking at it three years later, I’m like, ‘Maybe we did a pretty good job of bottling him up.’”

These days, a 260-yard outing for Ash is ho-hum, even an off-night. Through 11 games, the senior has 3,208 yards and 51 touchdowns on 17.92 yards per carry. He is one of four players in Texas high school football history to rush for over 10,000 career yards, and is second all-time with 1,080 points scored. 

Ash is like a Bigfoot tale deep in the East Texas Piney Woods. The only difference is he’s not impossible to find; he’s impossible to escape. He had 77 tackles, 15 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks from his linebacker spot in the regular season. Seven of his 11 catches this year have gone for touchdowns.

“They put him back deep to return kicks,” Grigsby said. “And we’re like, ‘What do we do?’ If we pooch it, the kid that you pooch it to is going to catch it and toss it back to him. We just onside kicked it every time because we were like, ‘We don’t even want to give him a chance to beat us that way.’”

These numbers can’t be waved away with explanations of inferior competition, either. Ash is accomplishing this in one of Class 2A’s toughest districts, where all four playoff teams won their first-round game. 

Ash is a generational talent at a school without generational pedigree. Mount Enterprise has an all-time winning percentage of .400 and has had only two double-digit win seasons since 1956. The 131 kids in the school make it one of the smallest in 2A DII. But Ash and his senior class have created a rapidly growing fan base. For this week’s second round game against Chilton, the line around the fence will run four people deep. 

“We’re going football crazy right now,” Mount Enterprise head coach Scott Ponder said.

Ponder, who’s been a head coach for 24 years, calls Ash the hardest-working kid he’s ever coached. The stories of Ash showing up at the fieldhouse at 6:30 a.m. to lift weights and run sprints by himself are almost as legendary as his on-field exploits. He is an example of what happens when a kid with God-given abilities grinds like he has none. Ash has gained 40 pounds of muscle since freshman year and now stands at 6-feet, 210 pounds. 

That dedication, combined with his attitude, makes him an easy person for Mount Enterprise fans to root for as he runs down the all-time rushing record.

“He’s chasing these records, but not one time has he or his family said one word about that,” Ponder said. “It’s never been more important than our team. It’s like it’s not even happening. There are a lot of these games where we pull him out the first chance we get. We limit his touches, but we never have to coach around his ego.”

Over these last four years, Ash’s mental maturity has been just as impressive as the physical. Cushing head coach Scott Holzhauer was Mount Enterprise’s head coach until Ash was in fifth grade. He used to watch Ash’s dominant peewee football highlights, but he never could’ve guessed he’d turn out to be one of the best running backs in Texas high school football history. But these past two years coaching against Ash, he never would’ve guessed this is how he would carry himself, either.

“He wasn’t the kid that scores a touchdown and just hands the ball to the referee, and that’s the kid he is now,” Holzhauer said. “But I guess when you score 900 touchdowns or whatever it is, you just get used to it.”

While that might be partially true, Ash says he is just as proud of his spiritual growth throughout high school as he is of his gains in speed and strength.

“This last time at church camp, I finally decided to stop living for the world and start living for the Lord,” Ash said. “It took me a while to realize that. I’m fully committed now.”

In life, he’s committed to Christ. But in football, he’s committed to Texas Tech. Ash is chasing the career rushing yards record, but the Red Raiders envision Ash stopping opposing running backs as a linebacker, joining the Big 12’s best defense. Texas Tech has had some recent success with Texas High School football offensive players transitioning to defense. Jacob Rodriguez, a dark horse Heisman candidate at linebacker, was a quarterback at Wichita Falls Rider. Last week against UCF, head coach Joey McGuire put him at quarterback to get a rushing touchdown and boost his candidacy. It doesn’t take too much mental gymnastics to picture Ash doing those same wildcat QB packages in the future.

By then, he’ll be somebody else’s nightmare.

“I hope this is the last time I’ve got to think about Kaegan Ash,” Grigsby said.