THE GAZETTE
Page B-4
Wednesday, February 12, 2014 g
On the ball with Ball
County high school hockey playoffs begin
Boys’ basketball: Rockville putting together strong season n
Georgetown Prep, Churchill win Metros swimming n
BY
A glimpse at the final Montgomery 2A standings in the Maryland Student Hockey League may have signaled a changing of the guard in the county, especially with Thomas S. Wootton High School (12-0)
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Our Lady of Good Counsel’s Brady Welch celebrates winning the boys’ 100 freestyle with a personal best time during Saturday’s Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming Championship in Germantown. goalies. Defending champion Churchill (9-2-1) finished second in the standings, outscoring its opponents, 81-22, despite the two 5-1 setbacks to Wootton. In the 10 games that were not head-to-head meetings, Wootton outscored its rivals, 89-14, while Churchill, which went 9-0-1 in those outings, owned a 79-12 advantage in goals. Three Churchill players, Junmno Kim (14 goals), Philip Satin (10) and Connor Liu (10) scored at least 10 goals, while six players, Ross Allen (16 assists), Satin (12), Liu (10), Charlie Ruter (10), Richard Ying (10) and Justin Vagonis (10) had at least 10 assists. Marcus Hurd (8-2-1, 2.66) is the primary netminder. — TED BLACK
Georgetown Prep, Churchill win Metros Eight total records were broken at Saturday’s 50th Washington Metropolitan In-
mark with her American record swim during Friday’s 500-yard freestyle preliminaries. With a time of 4 minutes, 28.71 seconds, Ledecky became the first woman to break the 4:30 barrier. She won the event by more than two pool lengths Saturday. Georgetown Prep accounted for three meet records. Juniors Carsten Vissering and Grant Goddard broke individual records in the 100-yard breaststroke (53.49) and 100yard butterfly (48.69), respectively. The two then joined classmates Adrian Lin and Brandon Goldstein to win the meet finale 400-yard freestlye in record fashion (3:04.83). Other meet records were set by Sidwell Friends’ Gavin Springer (200-yard freestyle, 1:38.29), Sherwood’s Morgan Hill (50-yard freestyle, 22.97), Our Lady of Good Counsel’s Brady Welch (100-yard freestyle, 45.00) and Wootton’s Kristina Li (100-yard backstroke, 54.12). — JENNIFER BEEKMAN
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terscholastic Swimming and Diving Championships won by Georgetown Prep and Winston Churchill. The Little Hoyas, who were the boys’ champion from 20042010, won their first Metros title in four years Saturday at the Germantown Indoor Swim Center with a 412-360 advantage over three-time defending champion Gonzaga. The Richard Montgomery boys finished third with 280.5 points and Thomas S. Wootton (263.5 points) and Walt Whitman (258) finished fourth and fifth, respectively. Churchill, which led by 67 points following Thursday’s diving competition, won its third championship in three years by besting the defending champion Wootton girls, 426346. Resurgent Walter Johnson (246), Richard Montgomery (238) and Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart (224) rounded out the top 5. Stone Ridge junior and 2012 Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky set a new Metros
Rockville High School’s Brian Ball took up defensive position behind Albert Einstein forward Joe Bradshaw. Among his worries were Bradshaw’s quick first step, and an offensive skill set that had burned many defenders. So when Bradshaw leaned, Ball shifted. When Bradshaw worked for a new position, Ball cast a lanky arm around him to deny an entry pass. It was a game of position chess, and Ball doesn’t lose many of those. It’s a sage trick the Rockville senior’s dad taught him throughout recreational league: any player, no matter how good, how tall, how fast, or how slippery, will be rendered useless if he never touches the ball. That’s how Ball earned the assignment of Bradshaw — when Rockville coach Steve Watson decided to go with a man-to-man defense — Einstein’s 6-foot-7, versatile threat from inside and out. “Coach says just use my length, and I’m like, ‘Coach! He’s 6-7!’” Ball said. “And he has long arms, and his first step is long. It’s not slow, either. So my dad actually told me, ‘Just don’t let him catch the ball, because when he catches the ball, he’s dangerous.’ So I just tried to deny him the ball, get a hand up right in his eyes.” He wasn’t always such a savant on the defensive side of the ball. Watson remembers a time when the 6-4 senior was a bit more focused on scoring. “Brian, as a young buck, was a great scorer,” Watson said, “But was not always the most focused defender. I think really starting at the end of his sophomore year, definitely into his junior year, he took great pride in it. And Joe Bradshaw is a great player and Brian really embraced the challenge of guarding him and he likes that, he likes the challenge of guarding [Wheaton’s] Ibrahim Kallon and Joe Bradshaw and he takes that on, and he can do that all the time and there’s a lot of really good basketball players he’s going to have to do that for.”
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PREP NOTEBOOK sporting the league’s only unblemished record punctuated by the Patriots’ 5-1 victory over Winston Churchill on Friday evening. But longtime Wootton coach Dave Evans is hardly viewing the standings as an entire validation of his team’s pending coronation as tournament champions Thursday at the Gardens Ice House in Laurel. Granted, Wootton owns two, identical, 5-1 victories over Churchill this season and has outscored its opponents by a 99-16 margin in its 12 games, but Evans has seen enough during his 20 years at the helm to know regular season success is no guarantee of postseason triumphs. “Right now, I couldn’t be happier with the way that we’re playing,” Evans said after last Friday’s latest victory over Churchill. “It’s great to have an undefeated season, but the guys know that the playoffs are what counts. Even toward the end of the game when things started to get a little chippy, I kept telling the guys to back away and not do anything that would hurt the team. We didn’t want to have anyone suspended heading into the playoffs.” The Wootton attack is led by Brandon Hall (18 goals, 17 assists, 35 points), Austin Schoenfeld (10, 19, 29), Luke Klecker (13, 5, 18) and Nicolas Band (12, 5, 17). Hall had two goals last week in the win over Churchill and Schoenfeld added a goal and an assist. Jake Mitchell, in net last week against Churchill, owns a 7-1 mark with a 2.17 goals against average and Aaron Cooperman (5-0, 1.83) are the Patriots’ two
TRAVIS MEWHIRTER
Ball’s lockdown defense has led Rockville to a 14-3 record prior to a brutal five-game stretch, which includes Springbrook, Col. Zadok Magruder, Poolesville and Sherwood, to close the season. During those first 17 games, the Rams held all but two teams to less than 60 points, and one of those, a Dec. 20 contest with Wheaton, went into four overtimes in which nine players fouled out. But Ball has become so much more than the role playing defensive specialist. He handles the ball on fast-breaks, not shy to go coast-to-coast. He pulls down rebounds — at least five in 10 games — going for four double-doubles in the quintet he has grabbed more than nine. And, perhaps most importantly for a Rockville team not known for lighting up scoreboards, Ball is scoring as often and as consistently as any player in the county. “That’s what he does,” Watson said. “That’s what we know he’s going to bring and if he brings us the other stuff — if he rebounds, if he gets on the floor, if he defends like crazy — he’s a very good player.” There is no player or coach — not even Watson — who knows Ball’s style of play quite like Essex Thompson. The sophomore Ram has matches up with Ball every single day during practice. “Oh, I get up in his stuff a lot,” Ball said with a grin as he planted his hand about two inches from Thompson’s face and waved it in front of the 6-2 sophomore. Thompson, who scored a season-high 13 points in the 59-49 victory over Einstein, blushed and shook his head. “That’s very realistic,” he said. But there was no malice or chagrin in his tone. Ball has found the delicate balance required of mentoring a promising sophomore, blending get-inyour-face defense at practice with teaching him the ins and outs of varsity basketball. “He’s my man, my advisor pretty much,” Thompson said. “He picks me up and everything, tells me how to do things. I’m new to this thing and my biggest thing is confidence. I was really worried last year and he just helps me a lot.”