CLARKSBURG BOYS’ BASKETBALL TURNS TO BASEBALL GADGET TO UPSET SPRINGBROOK, B-3
SPORTS DAMASCUS | CLARKSBURG
www.gazette.net | Wednesday, January 22, 2014 | Page B-1
Curling gains popularity in Olympic years
HOW THEY RANK BOYS The 10 best boys’ basketball teams in Montgomery County as ranked by The Gazette’s sports staff:
Rank 1.
School
Record Pts
Bullis
14-3 60
2.
Montrose Christian 9-5 53
3.
Gaithersburg
11-1 48
4.
St. Andrew’s
12-2 41
5.
Springbrook
9-2 35
6.
Clarksburg
9-3 31
6.
Montgomery Blair 9-2 23
8.
Walt Whitman
10-3 16
9.
Rockville
9-2 15
10.
Poolesville
9-2 8
Potomac Curling Club in Laurel teaches the sport to people of all ages, backgrounds n
BY
KENT ZAKOUR STAFF WRITER
Four years ago, Mark and Aimee Lawrence caught a fever during the Winter Olympics. And with Olympic sports closer — not the mainstream football, basketball and baseball events that typically consume the United States’ sporting culture — to the
forefront of their consciousness, they tried and fell in love with curling. “We just saw an article and said, “Hey, this might be fun to go throw a few stones,” Aimee said during an interview on Monday at the Potomac Curling Club in Laurel. “The people we met were open and engaging and we had a blast. ... We’re still here having fun.” Mark, 51, and Aimee, 45, moved to Derwood from California five-and-a-half years ago. They both had heard of curling, but never tried it before 2010. And Mark, a Seattle native and avid winter sports fan having grown up near Canada, was routinely
watching curling on television. Curling, according to several of Potomac Curling Club members, is a sport for anybody. Now, with the XXII Winter Olympics set to begin in Sochi, Russia, on Feb. 7, the sport has seen its quadrennial boost in popularity throughout the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, according to Pete Morelewicz, who serves on the Potomac Curling Club’s board of directors. “It doesn’t matter how old you are, gender or what shape you are in. We’re all a little left of center and that is a good thing,”
perfection
in repetition
Others receiving votes: None.
BEST BET
Gaithersburg at Clarksburg, 5:15 p.m., Friday: The first time
they met, it wasn’t close. The Trojans won 83-59. The Coyotes are playing better of late.
TOP SCORERS
Name, school A. Trier, Montrose Christian J. Friedman, Sandy Spring W. English, McLean I. Kallon, Wheaton M. Adkison, St. Andrew’s N. Segura, The Heights J. McKay, McLean K. Williams, Kennedy T. Stottlemyer, Poolesville J. Bradshaw, Einstein
n
BY
Record Pts
Damascus
11-2 60
2.
Walt Whitman
11-2 54
3.
Paint Branch
10-2 48
4.
Poolesville
10-1 37
4.
Holy Child
12-3 34
6.
Good Counsel
10-6 26
7.
Montgomery Blair 10-2 25
8.
John F. Kennedy
8-1 21
9.
Seneca Valley
9-3 19
10.
Gaithersburg
7-4 6
Others receiving votes: None.
BEST BET
Blair at Poolesville, 7 p.m. Friday: Whitney Carmack (16.7
points) and the Falcons look to continue their strong season against the Blazers.
TOP SCORERS
Name, school K. Prange, Damascus B. Beckwith, Quince Orchard S. Addison, Wootton J. Karim-Duvall, Churchill D. Walker, Watkins Mill K. Meredith, Northwest D. Harris, Paint Branch W. Carmack, Poolesville D. Lerner, Jewish Day J. Craig, Seneca Valley
1905970
PPG 19.3 18.7 18.1 18.0 17.6 17.1 16.9 16.7 16.6 15.9
TRAVIS MEWHIRTER STAFF WRITER
The 10 best girls’ basketball teams in Montgomery County as ranked by The Gazette’s sports staff:
School
Friedman shoots 500 to 1,000 shots a day to develop his accuracy
H
PPG 26.9 23.8 22.2 21.4 20.5 20.4 19.2 19.0 18.5 18.2
GIRLS
Rank 1.
See CURLING, Page B-2
TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Members of the Potomac Curling Club sweep as the curling stone approached the house at the National Capital Curling Center in Laurel on Monday.
TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Sandy Spring Friends School senior Jason Friedman shoots against Grace Brethren Christian School in Thursday’s boys’ basketball game.
ere are the numbers: 80, the amount of shots Sandy S p r i n g Friends S c h o o l coach Carl Parker wants his team to hoist up every 32 minutes; 50, the percentage of those shots that should come off the hands of Jason Friedman; 20, the total number of 3-pointers Parker asks of Friedman every game; 11, the number of seconds each Sandy Spring possession should last before firing up a shot. Some of those goals may seem unattainable. For the most part, they are. Ever since Parker implemented that system prior to a 91-55 loss to Georgetown Day, he hasn’t seen all of them reached in the same game. It’s unconventional in nearly every way, but Parker understands who he has in front of him — the 6-foot-2 Friedman — and how to maximize the senior’s, and therefore his team’s, potential: get him as many shots as possible. “It’s a lot of looks,” Parker
said. “It’s basically Grinnell style. That’s what it is.” Grinnell College became famous for its 3-point happy, offense-first style of play that led to a record-breaking 138-point night from Jack Taylor in November of 2012. Friedman is Parker’s Taylor. “It’s more exciting,” the coach said. “It’s more fun to watch. It’s really based on the fact that we have an outside shooter. You don’t get that a lot. If I don’t run my offense through him then I wouldn’t be much of a coach because here’s the deal, if you put him on the line and you don’t contest him, he’ll make the three. That’s a given.” Friedman says he has always had a natural gift for basketball. His mother, a Kansas native, was All-County, maybe All-State, according to the son, and passed along her genetic knack for basketball to Jason. But 10 threes in a game — the amount he buried in a 46-point game against Georgetown Day — didn’t come from being the son of a decent high school basketball player. It came during lunches. It came during 50-minute free periods. It came from a disinterest in video games and a passion for
See PERFECTION, Page B-2
Coach finds something more valuable than money Seventeenth-year girls’ basketball gave up making it rich, wins 350 games instead n
BY JENNIFER BEEKMAN STAFF WRITER
Longtime Damascus High School girls’ basketball coach Steve Pisarski had no plans to coach high school basketball when he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1988, and certainly not girls, for that matter. Rather he, like so many other people
in this world, had grand hopes of making excessive amounts of money. “When I was 22, 23-years old, my goal was to become rich, so I became a stockbroker,” Pisarski said. “I worked at Merrill Lynch, I really couldn’t have asked for a better [opportunity]. But the idea of making all that money, and I could have if I’d stayed, didn’t override the fact that I couldn’t stand doing it.” Then one day, as he begrudgingly put on his perfectly pressed suit and tie, a thought crept in from the back of Pisarski’s mind:
See COACH, Page B-2
DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE
Damascus High School girls’ basketball coach Steve Pisarski (right) demonstrates how to release the ball from the foul line for sophomore Claire Hanlon.