High School

Future USC Trojan Sets Illinois High School Football Record for Career TD Passes

Lincoln-Way East star Jonas Williams breaks the previous record of 127 shared by two others

Gary Adornato

Lincoln-Way East quarterback and USC commit Jonas Williams set the Illinois high school record for touchdown passes, on Friday in his team's 42-6 win over Meta Valley.
Lincoln-Way East quarterback and USC commit Jonas Williams set the Illinois high school record for touchdown passes, on Friday in his team's 42-6 win over Meta Valley. / Dean Reid

There is a new record holder for career touchdown passes in theIllinois high school football record books.

Jonas Williams, the senior quarterback for Lincoln-Way East set the mark at 128, early in the first quarter of his team's 42-6 win over Metea Valley, Friday night. He then went on to throw for three more scores before departing in the second half, stretching the IHSA all-time TD pass record to 131, with three regular season games and the playoffs yet to play.

Matt Orban hauled in the record breaker

The history making toss came on a 3-yard slant pattern to Matt Orban and was followed by the entire Griffins squad surrounding Williams and celebrating into the end zone.

Entering the game, Williams shared the previous record of 127 with Jordan Roberts, who played at Aurora from 2005-08, and Tyler Hutchinson, who starred at Greenville from 2012-14.

Williams Assault on the Record Book Began at Bolingbrook

Williams has been a four-year varsity starting quarterback, playing his first two years at Bolingbrook before transferring to Lincoln-Way East prior to his junior campaign. At Bolingbrook he passed for more than 5,800 yards and connected for 70 touchdown passes. As a junior at Lincoln-Way East, he tossed for 2,926 yards and 42 scores in leading the Griffins to a 12-1 record and the Illinois Class 8A state semifinals.

This season he has his team off to a 6-0 start and he has now thrown 19 TD passes in 2025.

In the summer of 2024, Williams, a four-star recruit, committed to the University of Oregon. At the time, he also had Alabama and Ohio State listed as finalists. In February, however, he decided to take a visit to USC and announced he was flipping his commitment to the Trojans. Following Lincoln-Way East's 2025 season, Williams will enroll for the spring semester at USC and begin peparing for his Trojans' career.

Yardage Record May Be the Next Milestone

Williams entered the 2025 season just 2,231 yards shy of the Illinois career passing yards record as well. He has surpassed 2,700 yards in each of his first three high school seasons.

The current Illinois high school all-time career passing yardage record is held by Logan Malachuk of Nazareth High School, who finished his high school career with 11,190 career passing yards.

Malachuk graduated in last spring and is currently a freshman on the Central Missouri University football team.

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Gary Adornato
GARY ADORNATO

Gary Adornato is the Senior VP of Content for High School On SI and SBLive Sports. He began covering high school sports with the Baltimore Sun in 1982, while still a mass communications major at Towson University. In 2003 became one of the first journalists to cover high school sports online while operating MIAASports.com, the official website of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association. Later, Adornato pioneered market-wide coverage of high school sports with DigitalSports.com, introducing video highlights and player interviews while assembling an award-winning editorial staff. In 2010, he launched VarsitySportsNetwork.com which became the premier source of high school media coverage in the state of Maryland. In 2022, he sold VSN to The Baltimore Banner and joined SBLive Sports as the company's East Coast Managing Editor.

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