Mankato East’s football team has long been known for its rushers, from Jeff Heller to Eric Schmidt to Craig Dahl to Jesse Graves.

But junior Kenthen King has surpassed every East running back for a single game when he rushed 35 times for 301 yards and two touchdowns in the season-opening 28-14 victory at Detroit Lakes last week.

“It’s pretty cool,” said King, who saw Graves play and has seen film of Dahl. “To be compared with those guys, it feels really good.”

The previous record was 276 yards by Heller in 1994, followed Schmidt at 264 yards (1997), Dahl at 149 yards (2001) and Graves at 218 yards (2004). The 35 carries ranks second behind Heller’s 38 attempts in a game in 1994.

“I was surprised that I had that many carries,” he said. “I thought I had about 20. The (offensive) line was amazing, they’re the only reason I got the record.”

Coach Dave Frisell said he had no intention of using King that much. Ideally, Frisell said, King would touch the ball 20 to 25 times in the rushing and passing game. But Detroit Lakes was unable to stop the inside zone play so Frisell kept calling it.

“Our ball control was working so well, there was no reason to go away from it,” he said. “(King’s) vision is excellent, he can make something out of nothing. He wasn’t getting touched until he was five, six yards downfield, but he was punishing the defensive backs.”

King scored four touchdowns in a game last year, which is one off the school record held by Heller (1994) and Chris Draheim (1998), before being limited by a leg injury.

East plays Mankato West at 7 p.m. Friday at Blakeslee Stadium.

Richter records

Last season, Aaron Richter was Mankato West’s leading receiver, setting the single-season school record with 60 receptions. On Friday, his twin brother Mike got into the record book for single-game receptions when he made 10 in the season-opening 35-13 win at Northfield.

“He was the guy that was open,” coach Mark Esch said. “We just took advantage of what they were doing.”

Esch said that the Northfield defensive backs were playing deep so he called for a lot of hitch patterns. At one point, Mike Richter made four consecutive receptions on hitch routes.

Aaron, who holds the career receptions record currently at 102, made seven catches against Northfield, and Mike said the twin brothers have friendly competition for bragging rights at home.

“We like to joke about who’s better,” he said.