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WINSTON-SALEM -- Maybe in time, we'll know how good he was. Because when he was at his best, Ricky Lewis might've been the best high school football player we ever saw.

Lewis limped onto the field Saturday night and carried Dudley to a 34-18 win over Kannapolis Brown in the state 3-AA championship game at BB&T Field. Then he simply flew off into history.

For the second straight season, the Dudley senior was named the most valuable player in the championship game after leading his team to a second straight title. He looked out over a celebration in the moments after the win and pondered his place in history.

"I don't know," Lewis said. "History, that might take a while to figure out."

He ran for 160 yards and scored two touchdowns a year after throwing for 196 yards and three touchdowns in the title game. He smiled as he thought back over a career that really started midway through his junior year when he was pressed into the role of running quarterback and never looked back. He didn't lose again.

"22-0," he said slapping his jersey. "Same as my number."

With just more than seven minutes left in the first quarter, in the midst of a classic Dudley drive to open the game, Lewis was airborne. Hit low by a diving Kannapolis defender, Lewis felt a sharp pain in his left knee as he left the ground. As he slammed into the artificial turf, he didn't move.

The opposing crowd stood and cheered. Josh Jones, a senior defensive lineman, stood on the sideline and bowed his head.

"I was praying," Jones said.

So was Lewis. He reached down for his knee just as Dudley's coaches and trainers got to him, and they convinced him to lie back. Steven Davis, the Panthers head coach, immediately turned to the sideline.

"We had to get somebody else in there," Davis said. Football is a cruel game sometimes, and in the last game of his prep career, Lewis found himself being replaced, helped off the field of the title game with his teammates watching in disbelief as the one player they couldn't do without was suddenly gone.

"I thought, 'Man, we're going to lose this game,' " he said.

Lewis went to the sideline to get his knee iced and to assess the damage. He said he heard voices. His teammates and people in the stands were telling him to be tough, to get back in the game, to shake it off. Easy for them to say. Lewis said he heard them all, and then some.

"God told me to get back in there," Lewis said. "I didn't argue with it."

God and the entire Dudley community was more like it. Lewis stayed out two plays then limped back onto the field. The opposing crowd was silent this time. The game was about to end.

Lewis would guide five touchdown drives into the heart of the Brown defense, gashing the Wonders on play after play, taunting them by picking up preposterous first downs when there was simply no way, scoring on a 16-yard run on fourth down, gaining 24 yards on a third-and-22, leading the Panthers on a seven-minute drive to open the game and running an offense that totaled more than 350 yards and only throwing one pass. "Dudley football," he said.

The relentless Panthers offense fed off huge hits from the all-senior defensive line, and the Dudley defense fed off Lewis and the ground-meat offense. Like most every team the Panthers played this year, Kannapolis was in over its head.

Brown is one of the great high school programs in this state, a school that has won multiple state titles, a school that knocked off top-seeded Charlotte Catholic two weeks ago in an historic upset that set the tone for the entire state playoffs. There was an historic feel to the final two weeks of the season. Independence fell, and great programs like Reidsville and Thomasville and Fayetteville 71st and Richmond County played on.

The final day of the season saw the best teams finish strong, each of them taking its place in state high school history. Dudley, with two straight titles, can be considered one of the best of all time, a team that won all 16 games this year, won its conference and took on the district and the sectional and the regional in one of the toughest schedules any team in the state has played in recent years.

And in the end, the Panthers took on one more with their quarterback limping around for 160 yards, limping for two touchdowns in the championship game, limping into North Carolina high school football history in his final game at Dudley.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com