SENIOR RUNNING BACK STEPS UP TO ATTEMPT TO FILL AVALON’S BIG SHOES, B-2
SPORTS DAMASCUS | GAITHERSBURG | GERMANTOWN
www.gazette.net | Wednesday, August 7, 2013 | Page B-1
What’s next for Katie Ledecky? Learning to drive Bethesda teen named top woman scorer at World Championships after winning four gold medals n
BY JENNIFER BEEKMAN STAFF WRITER
Bethesda teenager Katie Ledecky is missing one staple in the lives of many 16-yearolds, her driver’s license. But the 2012 Olympic gold medalist in the 800-meter freestyle can take comfort in a growing list of accomplishments that most people will never match.
On Sunday the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart rising junior earned the highest honor at the 15th FINA World Championships in Barcelona, Spain, when she was named the top woman scorer in a field of competition that included four-time Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin. Ledecky won gold in all four events she contested — 400-meter freestyle, 800-meter freestyle, 1,500-meter freestyle, 800-meter freestyle relay — and set two world records. After setting a new American mark in the 400-meter freestyle en route to her first gold, Ledecky’s time of 15 minutes, 36.53 seconds in the 1,500-meter freestyle July 30 smashed the previous world record by 6 seconds held
by Bishop O’Connell (Va.) graduate Kate Ziegler since 2007. Ledecky set her second world mark in a come-from-behind win against Denmark’s Lotte Friis in Saturday’s 800-meter freestyle — despite trailing by as much as one second through the first 600 meters, Ledecky won the event by nearly 3 seconds. Franklin won a record six gold medals in Spain but Ledecky surpassed her in scoring due to a point system that doesn’t include relay results and awards bonus points for world records. Humility, Ledecky’s mother Mary Gen
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FILE PHOTO
Bethesda teen Katie Ledecky won four gold medals and set two world and one American records at last week’s FINA World Championships in Barcelona, Spain.
Northwood’s football team rarely punts n
Coach believes no-kicking strategy is Gladiators’ best chance for success BY
DAN FELDMAN STAFF WRITER
FILE PHOTO
Georgetown Prep’s Michael Wolfe competes during a 2012 summer basketball league game at High Point High School in Beltsville.
FOR RECRUITING,
it’s all about
AAU
Most college basketball recruiters now seek players off high school courts n
BY
TRAVIS MEWHIRTER STAFF WRITER
Most of America was sound asleep last weekend when 30 or so college basketball coaches yawned their way through McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and
crammed onto a red-eye flight bound for Orlando. As George Washington University’s coach, Mike Lonergan, skimmed the glassyeyed scene, he said he saw all of the familiar faces: John Beilein from Michigan, Bob Huggins of West Virginia, Purdue’s Matt Painter, Navy’s Ed DeChellis. Unlike the rest of the passengers on the flight, it wasn’t so much a trip from the neon of Vegas to the beaches of Florida, rather an exhausting recruiting voyage from one Amateur
Athletic Union basketball tournament to the next. “It was unbelievable,” said Lonergan, who signed Col. Zadok Magruder High School’s Nick Griffin last year. “… I’d say about 90 percent of our recruiting is based on AAU because of the time of year and the recruiting is so accelerated.” Hyperdrive might be the more apt descriptor of recruiting when AAU hums into full swing. Within two weeks last summer with the local AAU team D.C. Assault, Suitland’s Roddy Peters had gathered offers from schools with prestigious basketball pedigrees such as Kansas, UCLA, Georgetown, Illinois, Maryland, Cincinnati and scores of others. He said it took three years of headlining the Rams for Peters to scrape up one, lonely offer from St. Joseph’s. “I didn’t think that I would have been recruited that much,” said Peters, who opted to play for Mark Turgeon and the University of Maryland. “I thought I was going to be kind of small time.” With the Assault, and many other elite AAU teams in the area and around the nation, the notion of small-time recruiting is near comical. Said Assault general manager Damon Handon, “A high school team may have one, maybe two Division I kids, but every kid in our program is a [Division I] prospect.” To be on an elite high school team is one
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As the reopened Northwood High School phased in students annually by class, the school launched its varsity football program in 2006 without any seniors. Though that put the team at a significant disadvantage across the board, the effect was arguably felt hardest on the offensive and defensive lines. Unable to successfully block the opponent, Northwood had a couple of kicks blocked in its first two games. “Oh, no,” coach Dennis Harris said he thought to himself. “We can’t. Nah. If they’re just going to come through here and block it anyway, we might as well try to get points by doing some other stuff.” Harris began to experiment with more fake field goals that season. Since, Harris — Northwood’s only coach since its reopening — has increasingly eschewed kicking and punting all together, more often faking or just leaving his offense on the field. “Just little stuff like that to try to tip the scales our way a little bit,” Harris said. “All that stuff helps, because typically in the last eight years, we’ve been kind of undermanned every year. So, we just try to get out there and have fun, take chances and try to give ourselves a little bit better chance of being successful.” Northwood has gone just 21-49 in Harris’ seven years at the helm, but he is convinced his aggressive strategy has helped his team. While tinkering to find the ideal play-calling split, Harris read about Pulaski Academy in Arkansas. Pulaski, coached by Kevin Kelley, practically never punts and almost always onside kicks. Kelley developed the approach after reading a mathematical study of football outcomes, which showed coaches hurt their teams by too easily relinquishing possession.
See NORTHWOOD, Page B-3
FILE PHOTO
Northwood High School football coach Dennis Harris often leaves his offense on the field in lieu of punting or kicking.
Fans keep the Spirit high through struggles Spirit has one win, but draws the league’s fourth-largest home crowds n
BY JENNIFER BEEKMAN STAFF WRITER
PHOTO FROM THE WASHINGTON SPIRIT
Washington Spirit fans watch their favorite team play against New York on April 20.
If attendance numbers were the only factor that determined the inaugural National Women’s Soccer League standings, the Germantown-based Washington Spirit would be in good position to qualify for the four-team playoff field at the end of the month. Despite managing just one win in 16 weeks, the team has spent the majority of its first season of existence bouncing between third and fourth place on
the eight-team league’s list of average home-crowd size. Two of the three teams above Washington boast some of the more recognizable names in women’s soccer: No. 1 Portland (Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath) and No. 3 Western New York Flash (all-time international scoring leader Abby Wambach). Montgomery County and the Washington, D.C., area, in general, are soccerrich communities with a tradition of success in women’s soccer — led by Mia Hamm, the Washington Freedom won the 2003 Founder’s Cup in the Women’s United Soccer Association’s third and final season. And the Spirit have been able to draw from that, owner Bill Lynch said. Washington draws an average attendance of 3,626, which is above the
projected number (3,000) Lynch said prior to the season as the one necessary for the organization to be sustainable. In addition, an average of 3,000 have checked out each game online, Spirit General Manager Chris Hummer said. “We are thrilled with our attendance. Certainly we have a great soccer community [around us] and people who are fans of women’s soccer, they support the game and the players and the idea of coming out and being entertained. More than winning a championship, this is the third try of a professional women’s league, everyone is happy there’s women’s soccer at all. I think the fans are smart enough about the game to know good soccer when they see it,” Hummer
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