Hart Lee Anything He Can't Do

In Bay City, a town of 17,837 that's 70 miles southwest of Houston, fans turn out as much to see senior flanker Joe De-Loach as Dykes. DeLoach, 17, ran a wind-aided 10.00 in the 100 at the state meet in May (his best legal time is 10.38) and won gold medals in the 100, 200 and sprint relay at the Pan Am Junior Games in the Bahamas this summer. Although DeLoach has more impressive credentials than Carl Lewis had at the same age, Mills has a strange lament: "For years I could say, 'We don't have the fastest kids in the world, but we get the job done.' I can't say that anymore."

He can say he has the most formidable set of receivers in the nation who also worry about grades; DeLoach is a 3.1 student. "We'll send Joe deep a lot," says Mills, "and the other team will have to have two men chasing him. And if they don't have two on Hart Lee, we'll hit him. It's simple thinking, but it wins ball games." Adds Dykes, "Joe makes the defense back off. In the end something will open up, if not with one of us, then with the tight end, he being my little brother." Sophomore Billy Sean Dykes, hardly little at 6'3" and 245 pounds, is also a versatile athlete. He played first base for the Bay City team that went to the 1984 Babe Ruth World Series at Niles, Mich., finishing fourth.

In college Dykes plans to put basketball and baseball on hold in favor of football—Emfinger sees him as a tight end—at a pass-oriented school. "Somewhere my talents fit in," Dykes says. "Not a place where it's third-and-long and then they'll throw."

Schools like Stanford, UCLA, Texas and Notre Dame have been mentioned, but if Dykes knows which it'll be, he's not letting on. Dykes did, however, work last summer for a local drilling company owned by a Bay Citian named Tom Richards. He's a graduate of Texas A&M.