THE GAZETTE
Wednesday, August 7, 2013 p
SPIRIT
Continued from Page B-1 said. The Spirit have certainly produced good soccer. Of their league-high 14 losses — it has also tied four times — only four have been by more than two goals. Injuries and lack of scoring have been major issues. In the initial allocation — the top seven players on each team’s roster were allocated by the
AAU
Continued from Page B-1 thing; to be on an elite AAU team represents a whole new world of exposure and opportunity, where teams play in front of “basically every big school,” Peters said, and offers are extended by the handful. Before Potomac’s Dion Wiley could get recruited by the big time schools, according to Wolverines coach Renard Johnson, he had to be recruited by the big time AAU programs. Now, after a few seasons with Team Takeover, Wiley is the most heralded rising senior in the state, bound for Maryland over his chopped down list of Georgetown, Cincinnati and Florida State. Former Magruder standout Garland Owens, headed for Boston College this year after a prep season with Massanutten Military Academy, had created a little buzz during his successful stint as a Colonel, but it wasn’t until he joined the Mid-Atlantic Select that the high-level offers began pouring in. “It’s pretty much a common thing,” Select coach James Lee said. “A lot of [college] coaches know the [Washington Catholic Athletic Conference] and the [Interstate Athletic Conference] but they’re not familiar with kids from Oakdale and some of the public schools, so once he gets on the AAU circuit his exposure, his recruiting stock sky-
NORTHWOOD
Continued from Page B-1 Harris isn’t quite ready to go as far as Kelley, but the Northwood coach has bought in to the basic tenets. Harris said even good high school punters and kickers — and he believes he has one in Christian Reyes — tend to be erratic. Too many punts are shanked, too many pooch attempts roll into the end zone and too many field goals have something go wrong in the relatively complex snap-tohold-to-kick system to justify giving up the ball or going for fewer points than possible. The equation changes based on distance to a first down and field position. Fourth-and-short, even deep in Northwood’s own territory, Harris sometimes calls for a run up the middle. Once his team nears, and especially once it has crossed, midfield, Harris is much more prone to go for it —
three soccer federations backing the NWSL, the U.S., which officially runs the league, Canada and Mexico — Washington was not dealt a true scoring entity. The team boasts world-class talent, including U.S. Women’s National Team veterans Ali Krieger on defense and Lori Lindsay in the midfield. Spirit midfielder Diana Matheson is the Mia Hamm of Canada, Hummer said. But Washington has only posted 13 goals in 19 games. In the same sentence in which
rockets.” The first true star to graduate from the Select was Springbrook’s Jamal Olasewere, who picked Long Island over Georgetown, Xavier and several others. As Olasewere’s name grew, so did the Select’s. Since the summer of 2010, Lee estimates he has sent “at least” 30 to 40 players onto schools, scholarship in hand, with “seven or eight” from last season’s crop alone. “I think it’s a great opportunity for kids to get exposure, to showcase what they can do and it’s a great avenue for college coaches to see athletes play,” Lee said. “These tournaments have 32, 64 teams you can see play on a few courts.” Added Lonergan, “You can go to one event and see 100 Division I players.” National championship tournaments hosted in Milwaukee, Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Orlando are the obvious hotbeds for scholarship offers, but Peters said that even in the smaller tournaments he saw dozens of coaches in the stands. When exactly it is that AAU became the prime recruiting grounds for basketball players is near impossible to pinpoint — Springbrook coach Tom Crowell estimates it to be about 14 to 15 years ago — but it’s easy to see why. College coaches’ schedules are freed up for traveling — both Turgeon and Dalonte Hill, the Terps’ top recruiter, were also in attendance in Vegas for the
no matter how many yards his team needs to get a first down. The better a team’s offense, the more effective the strategy becomes for two reasons. 1. A better offense is more likely to convert the fourth-down attempt. 2. A better offense is more likely to score if it converts the fourth-down attempt. Plus, Harris said his frequent fakes and straight attempts keep defenses off-guard when Northwood actually kicks or punts. He said he recalled a time his punter picked up the ball after a bad snap and still got the punt off, because the opponent didn’t rush due to fear of a fake. Overarching all this is the idea that Northwood’s opponent must dedicate a portion of their practice time to preparing for Harris’ uncommon play-calling. Harris hopes that means the opponent is spending less time on another aspects of the game and giving Northwood some other advantage.
Hummer admitted the first thing Washington will go after following its season finale against playoff contender Sky Blue FC of New York/New Jersey are more offensive-minded players, he praised the team’s personnel with being just the type of professional athletes an organization needs to build a strong fan base. “You talk about not getting allocated certain types of players, but we got certain types of people. They get it. If not for the fan support, we’re not here. Literally. How many professional
Adidas Super 64 tournament last weekend — they get to see what the players can do not only playing alongside some of the best players in the country, but against the best players in the country. “That’s huge,” Lonergan said. “It’s a good level of AAU, it’s not like they’re scoring 18 points in a summer league game and the two best players on the other team are away on vacation. Nearly every player on the court is a Division I player.” Not that high school doesn’t matter, or that college coaches don’t frequent the local matchups during the winter — Otto Porter, the Washington Wizards’ recent No. 3 lottery pick in the NBA draft, never took a single shot in AAU basketball — but it has become what some coaches are calling a “necessary evil.” “It’s funny, because all these guys go around through AAU ball, but the final decision — they almost always call the high school coaches,” Crowell said. “They want to know ‘What kind of kid is he?’ I think the AAU and high school coaches can go hand in hand.” In the end, Crowell said, there are ultimately three factors in deciding an athlete’s future at the next level: talent, character, and the ability to expose the two. All it takes, he said, “is just one guy to look at them.” tmewhirter@gazette.net
As logical as Harris’ strategy is, a lot of his choices are based on feel. “It’s more of a mentality,” said Harris, who first became a varsity coach at age 25 in Virginia. “I’ve never been very conservative as a coach.” If Northwood scores a touchdown on a big play, Harris sees the opponent as particularly vulnerable, because sometimes, opposing coaches are talking to the players that just allowed a touchdown rather than setting up special-teams players. That’s when Harris is particularly likely to go for two. “When something bad happens to the other team, they tend to be looking around, looking for answers, trying to figure out what just happened,” Harris said. “And while they’re figuring out what just happened, something else just happened.” A frequent argument against Harris’ strategy, at least by those who understand the math be-
Continued from Page B-1
FILE PHOTO
Bethesda teen Katie Ledecky said she plans to swim for her high school team at Stone Ridge School for the Sacred Heart this winter after setting two world records last week. She is a junior. through, she added. Ledecky swims 8,000 meters or yards per day, according to her USA Swimming bio, and trains nine times per week. An intensified dry land regimen has increased her physical strength. That coupled with better patience to stick to any game plans she and coach Bruce Gemmell discuss before each race has taken her to new heights. She said patience early in Saturday’s 800-meter freestyle win allowed her to take off in the last 200. Ledecky said her results last week far exceeded her expecations and now she and Gemmell will have to lift the bar — more records are surely on the horizon.
Ledecky has certainly become a more recognizable figure and her fame will likely only continue to grow. But she doesn’t put much thought into how many times she rewrites history, or the number of people who stop her on the street, just that her performance each day is better than the previous one. “I’m just excited to get home and enjoy the rest of my summer. I’m planning on getting my [learner’s] permit [for driving] in the next week, maybe next two weeks. Definitely by the end of summer,” Ledecky said. jbeekman@gazette.net
leagues get a third chance?” Hummer said. The Spirit have worked to earn their loyal fan base, Hummer and Lynch said. Every single player has made herself available for appearances, to run camps — the Spirit has connected with Montgomery Soccer Inc. among other local youth soccer organizations — to host pizza parties for raffle winners, among other interaction with fans, Hummer said. These athletes, women soccer players in general, Lynch said, are
uniquely engaged with their fans. They hang around after games and are honored to be seen as role models, which isn’t always the case in athletics. Hummer said the team’s priority now is to reward its fans with a winning 2014 campaign. “We’re thankful for our fans. But we know they’re not going to wait around for multiple seasons. We expect to be a contender next year,” Hummer said. jbeekman@gazette.net
FILE PHOTO
Col. Zadok Magruder High School’s Garland Owens (center) said he had a lot more scholarship offers after playing Amateur Athletic Union basketball than he did just playing for his high school.
LEDECKY
said, has always been one of her strongest qualities; Ledecky made sure to praise her teammate while expressing her own excitement. “Missy deserves [being named top scorer] more than I do probably. She had an incredible week and we’re all so proud of her and she is an amazing person. It’s so great to be a part of a team with her and all the other swimmers on the U.S. team,” Ledecky said. “I just had an incredible week and had a lot of fun doing it. I’m really thrilled right now, [this meet] exceeded all my expectations and goals going into it.” In the 12 months since she came out of relative obscurity to win in London Ledecky, who said she plans to continue swimming for Stone Ridge this winter, has established herself as one of the world’s best distance swimmers of all time — she isn’t limited to distance events but said they will be her focus for the foreseeable future. Though her recent rise to the top of international swimming seems to have happened rather quickly, it is the result of dayby-day progress over the past 365 days, Ledecky said. She was driven not to have a letdown following her Olympic debut but to build on her remarkable break-
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hind it, is Northwood’s defensive players would feel as if Harris didn’t trust them. But Harris said, because the strategy is so ingrained in his program — his twitter handle is @H82puntNhs — that hasn’t been an issue. In fact, Harris said, sometimes, defensive players get extra fired up when taking the field after a failed fourth-down attempt, pledging
to get that one back. Of course, the offensive players love the strategy. Quarterback Charles Hennessey, as part of his responsibilities, must line up on punt plays everywhere from personal protector to longsnapper in order to facilitate Northwood’s wide array of fakes. “If it works perfectly, you get the other coaches on the sideline to yell at their players,”
Hennessey said. “There’s nothing you can do about it. We just got you that time.” Though Harris said he’ll still punt and kick a fair amount this season, he can imagine his strategy evolving to the point he never does either. “We’ll try a lot of things that mostpeoplewon’tdo,”Harrissaid. dfeldman@gazette.net