East Lincoln QB Chazz Surratt needs surgery, done for season
East Lincoln All-American quarterback Chazz Surratt will not play another game in high school.
Surratt, a 6-foot-4 senior, suffered ligament damage to his left throwing elbow in the first quarter of Friday’s 47-6 N.C. 2AA second round playoff win over Wilkes Central. His mother, Brandi, told the Observer Monday that Surratt will need surgery to repair the ligament damage and the rehab would take 4 to 6 months. So Surratt will miss the remainder of the football season and East Lincoln’s upcoming basketball season.
Brandi Surratt said her son would enroll at North Carolina in January. He committed to the Tar Heels last summer.
East Lincoln, which has won 29 straight football games with Surratt at quarterback, will play a N.C. 2AA quarterfinal Friday at home against East Burke. The Mustangs basketball team, ranked No. 7 in the Observer’s Sweet 16 poll, was 24-1 last season, losing only to Kinston and Duke recruit Brandon Ingram in the state championship. Surratt, who averaged 20 points, was named an Associated Press all-state basketball player last season, an award he also won in football.
“To be told your high school career is over is devastating,” Brandi Surratt said. “He’s just got to move on. There are people in much worse situations than Chazz. You can’t be selfish. But he’s such a competitor and such a team player. He’s never about himself and wants to be there for his teams. He feels he let people down. It’s just not the way you want to go out. You don’t want to feel forced out and he feels forced out.”
Surratt ends his career with 10,740 passing yards and 136 passing touchdowns. He has 4,678 rushing yards and 78 touchdowns. Surratt played wide receiver his freshman year and has 16,583 total offensive yards for his career, just seven yards off the state record set by former Independence All-American Chris Leak in 2002.
Surratt ranks No. 4 all-time in passing yardage and No. 3 in touchdown passes.
“It’s a lesson to all children,” Brandi Surratt said, “it can be taken away in a matter of moments. Sports are a privilege. Fortunately for Chazz, he has a college career to look forward to, and not everybody does. That’s how we look at it. He’ll go to UNC and they’ll rehab him and take care of him and that is where he will get the best medical care. It makes perfectly good sense for us to send him there.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2015 at 7:03 PM with the headline "East Lincoln QB Chazz Surratt needs surgery, done for season."