From time to time, entries on this blog will come from my colleagues who cover high school sports. To wit, this entry comes from The Sun's Katherine Dunn:

The soccer season has been doubly successful this fall at Catonsville, where the boys and the girls teams are undefeated.

“It’s nice to see two teams in the same sport that are playing very well,” said girls coach James Fitzpatrick. “I think [the boys] have the same thing going with them that we do — they work hard for each other and that’s very much true of our team.”

Both are 7-0 and, of course, neither wants to be the first to lose.

“It’s a good, friendly rivalry where we each kind of push each other,” said boys coach Victor Vega.

Stock for both teams rose on Tuesday after wins over the defending Baltimore County champions from Eastern Tech. The No. 8 Comets girls won, 2-1, over the No. 13 Mavericks, who tied Loch Raven in last year’s title match. The boys won, 3-0, over the No. 14 team.

Fitzpatrick and Vega said the wins gave their teams a confidence boost.

“We had been playing pretty well up to then but Eastern Tech was a true test for us,” said Vega. “If nothing else it gave the kids a real vote of confidence going into the Towson game that we can play with the big guns.”

The girls play host to Towson today at 3:45, playing before the homecoming football game, and the boys travel to meet the Generals Saturday at 10 a.m.

While beating Towson won’t be easy for either team, the boys may have the tougher task, because the Generals are 4-1, with their only loss to No. 9 Mount St. Joseph, and they are ranked No. 11.

“They’re just tactically so sound and they have Wils Alpern up top. He’s one of the top forwards in the county if not the state,” said Vega, of the senior who has five goals and three assists.

The Comets, who stress defense, will have to be on their game in the back with Daniel Leahy, Eric Swaboda, Christian Curry and goalie Jeffrey Woods.

Towson boys coach Randy Dase, whose team beat the Comets in the regional playoffs last season, expects a tough contest.

“I know last year they were young and they were a challenge,” said Dase. “When you score three goals against Eastern Tech and shut them out, you’re an outstanding ballclub.”

As for the girls, they have overwhelmed opponents so far, outscoring them, 34-2. Striker Jessica Nonn has contributed to more than half of those scores with 16 goals and four assists.

Posted by Milton Kent at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Tonight's 7 o'clock City-Dunbar football game will be played at Johns Hopkins University's Homewood Field and serves as the second annual Bob Wade Classic, in honor of the former Dunbar boys basketball and football coach, who is also the city schools' athletic director.

Proceeds from the game will go to help the school's alumni make up for shortfalls that the school system is unable to meet. In addition, some of the school's most notable alumni will be honored at halftime. Former boys basketball and football coach Pete Pompey and Tommy Polley, a former Ravens and St. Louis Rams linebacker and Dunbar graduate, will be honored at a luncheon at the school this afternoon.

The game itself has a ring of importance, as the Poets (3-0) are riding a 12-game win streak -- their last loss coming to the Knights last season. Meanwhile, City (2-1) needs a win, coming off last week's home loss to Edmondson, to have any realistic chance of adding a third straight Division I title to their resume.

Posted by Milton Kent at 6:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The debate over whether or not to allow metal bats in youth baseball out of safety concerns has made its way to Pennsylvania, and if people here in Maryland are paying attention, it just might open the door to bringing the Little League World Series here.

With the momentum of the decision earlier this year by New York City officials to ban the use of metallic bats in high schools, the Pennsylvania House's Children and Youth Committee is hearing testimony today on a proposed ban on non-wooden bats in organized baseball and softball games from high schools all the way down.

A coalition calling itself Don't Take My Bat Away, fronted by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and comprised of sporting goods manufacturers, bat makers and Little League officials, has banded together from across the baseball universe to fight the move. They contend that metal bats are no less inherently safe than wooden bats, and don't want them taken away.

(By the way, left unspoken in the debate is the real reason why high schools and youth leagues use metal bats more than wooden bats: They cost less in the long run, as metal bats rarely need to be replaced. When was the last time a kid or a major leaguer for that matter kept the same wooden bat for an entire month, much less entire season?)

At any rate, Little League officials are hinting that if Pennsylvania enacts a metallic bat ban, they might move the World Series from Williamsport, the picturesque little town where it's been held since 1947.

Here's a humble suggestion: If the politicians in Pennsylvania are silly enough to enact such a ban, potentially tossing away millions of dollars in tourism and all the international media attention that comes with it, Maryland officials should immediately move to bring the World Series to, say, Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen.

Posted by Milton Kent at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

In the wake of the injury to Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett in the season opener, we should be amazed that there aren't more instances like that throughout football.

We should particularly be thankful that more kids aren't hurt at the high school level, where the quality of both immediate medical response and teaching of proper tackling techniques can vary greatly from school to school.

We're reminded of all of that this week as we pass the third anniversary of former Loyola defensive back Van Brooks' injury during an early season game as his head struck the knee of another player while Brooks was making a tackle. Brooks, who was immediately paralyzed, has gradually and remarkably regained a great deal of upper-body movement, and hopes to walk again someday.

But even with such a high-profile case as Everett's, who also has regained some motion and was moved last week from Buffalo to suburban Houston to rehab, there are still reasons to worry. Two weeks ago, Jonathan Caban, a senior free safety from Iona Prep in New Rochelle, N.Y., suffered a neck injury during a game making a tackle, and had to be carried off the field by stretcher. Caban never lost consciousness and retained the ability to wriggle his legs. He returned to the sideline as a statistician, but has been ruled out of play until he sees an orthopedist next week.

For any players reading this space, the most important phrase you'll read comes courtesy of ESPN Radio's Mike Golic, a former NFL defensive lineman and the father of two football players himself. Speaking this week about potentially catastrophic injuries, Golic said he tells his kids to always see what they're hitting, meaning to keep their heads up when making tackles. It's good and potentially life-saving advice.

Posted by Milton Kent at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

No doubt, Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy will pick up a few recruits, not to mention forge an emotional tie with the players in his locker room for his, shall we say, passionate defense of a quarterback on his roster whose intestinal fortitude was challenged in a column in last Saturday's Oklahoman.

The theory will go that Gundy's willingness to take on all comers in support of an athlete means that he has his players' collective backs, a thought that must be appealing not only to prospective team members, but to their parents as well.

Just wondering, though: If you're the parent of a potential recruit, do you really want someone who could flame out so publicly to be your child's principal male role model when he is away from home?

In the spirit of candor and full disclosure, the author of the offending column, Jenni Carlson, is a friend of mine. I've known her for eight years and she recently appeared as a guest on a monthly radio show I host on WYPR. I consider her a first-rate journalist and a better person who didn't deserve to be berated that way.

Even if I weren't Jenni Carlson's friend, I'd have serious doubts about placing my kid's welfare in Mike Gundy's hands after what I've seen. Loyalty is a key virtue, but comporting yourself in public is pretty darned important, too.

Posted by Milton Kent at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Each night on MSNBC's "Countdown," anchor Keith Olbermann designates someone as the "Worst Person in the World,' an "honor" usually reserved for people on the other side of the ideological table from him.

Now, while I don't have Olbermann's fancy-schmancy suits, or his big-time television contract or even his book deal, I can spot the "worst" person in the sports world, and he's on his way here.

That would be former shoe shill Sonny Vaccaro, who has done more to corrode the amateur basketball world, from high school recruiting to college coaching and beyond, than anyone else.

Vaccaro, who spent 30 years pushing kids and coaches through sponsorship of AAU teams, summer camps and tournaments, to whichever shoe company he had sold his soul, whether it be Nike, adidas or Reebok, left Reebok this year, as some of the sport's bigger names have moved to try to regain control of the process.

Rather than slither into oblivion, Vaccaro is speaking at law schools, trying to encourage students to overturn the NBA rule that U.S.-born players have to wait a year after high school to enter the NBA, as well as challenging the NCAA's hold on the image of players from when they were college students. He is scheduled to speak locally at Maryland tomorrow.

Look, what Vaccaro aims to do, in some cases, isn't entirely wrong. One can reasonably argue that a high school graduate, who can join the military and vote, should be able to decide for himself if he wants to pursue a professional basketball career when he wants to. And colleges shouldn't be able to sell a former player's jersey, a la Juan Dixon's Maryland uniform, forever without, at some point, letting the player himself have a cut.

That said, the right thing done for the wrong reasons is still wrong, and no one has been more self-serving than Vaccaro, whose actions over the past three decades have helped to pervert the high school basketball scene, and he's done what he's done without any level of remorse for the outcome.

And it wasn't just basketball. Vaccaro reportedly signed former tennis player Anna Kournikova to a shoe deal when she was 12. His response last Friday when a Yale student asked him about the propriety of signing someone so young was, "Too young? What the hell is too young? What about child actors?"

According to Sports Illustrated's Luke Winn, Vaccaro said, "Everything I ever did was to promote the individual." That sentence alone explains the mess that high school and college athletics have become. For that reason, Sonny Vaccaro should rightfully hang his head in shame.

That is, if he had any.

Posted by Milton Kent at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

It's tempting to think of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association as the local answer to the NCAA, stuck in the past and in the minutiae of enforcing the rules without a seeming concern for the kids who are affected by those rules.

It's a pleasure, then, to recommend the newly redesigned MPSSAA Web site, which not only is user-friendly and accessible with links and information, but is also quite vibrant and attractive, hardly what you'd expect from a 'just-the-facts, ma'am' organization.

By the way, Ned Sparks, executive director of the MPSSAA, wrote in following Tuesday's column regarding the increasing number of nationally televised high school football games.

Sparks shared that the MPSSAA requires broadcasters to adhere to a set of guidelines when broadcasting state playoff events, and that those guidelines have been distributed to local school systems "in the hope that they would use them in an effort to prevent exploitation of the students."

Sparks wrote that any rights fees that the MPSSAA collects for playoff broadcasts go to defray the cost of the event, with the biggest cost going for travel reimbursement.

Finally, the director wrote that state regulations bar students from missing class time to travel over 300 miles, from participating in an event that determines a national championship, and from playing with their team in any contest after the state tournament in their respective sport.

Posted by Milton Kent at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Fresh on the heels of today's column decrying the unrestrained spread of television into high school athletics, we report that two more football games of local interest have been added to Comcast's CN8 channel schedule.

(Rest assured that we here at Varsity Letters will never let irony get in the way of providing information. That's the way we roll, as the kids say.)

A telecast of the Old Mill-South River contest, scheduled to be played Sept. 28, will air the next night at 7 p.m. The Oct. 19 Severna Park-Arundel game will be taped and shown the following night, also at 7 p.m.

Posted by Milton Kent at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

You can now add copper thieves to the list of bizarre reasons to call a sporting event.

Two Arizona high school football teams, Scottsdale Horizon and Anthem Boulder Creek, were all set to play a game Friday night when the Anthem stadium lights failed to turn on. The game was originally delayed for 90 minutes, then officially called 15 minutes after that when officials discovered that the copper from the wires of the stadium's lighting system had been stripped. The game was rescheduled and played Saturday night at a Glendale high school.

Police around the country have linked the thefts of copper, whose price has reportedly risen 70 percent in the last two years, to the sale of methamphetamines, as the metal is stolen and then re-sold.

Posted by Milton Kent at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

One of the area's best softball players has made a commitment to one of the nation's best collegiate programs.

Junior Stephanie Speierman, who led Hammond to the school's first state championship last year, verbally agreed over the weekend to sign with Michigan, the 2005 national champions.

Speierman, who went 23-1 last season with a 0.21 ERA, was arguably the best pitcher in the area, setting a state record by striking out 426 batters. She also hit a robust .649 average, scoring 30 runs and driving in 18, while walking 37 times -- also a state record.

Speierman capped off her marvelous season last year by pitching a perfect game in the state final against North East of Cecil County, striking out 19 of a possible 21 batters, while tripling in two early on to provide all the scoring the Golden Bears would need.

Now, if Speierman could just suit up at quarterback this weekend for the Michigan football team.

Posted by Milton Kent at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

It slipped my mind yesterday in the item about CN8's plan to televise high school football games in Maryland-Virginia-Washington, D.C. area that there was another local team involved in a telecast in the not-too-distant future.

The telecast of the Francis Scott Key-Thomas Johnson game will air on tape at noon on Sept. 22. And, to set the record straight, the Severn-Archbishop Spalding game that I referenced yesterday will also air on a tape delay Saturday at 7 p.m. So, there you go.

By the way, the show that started this boomlet of high school football games on television, "Two-A-Days,' is picking up stakes and moving from an Alabama high school to one in Louisiana and from MTV, which used to carry music videos, to ESPN, which used to air sports.

The New York Post reported last month that the show, which is renamed "Varsity, Inc.," will shift to West Monroe High and will focus entirely on football and skip over the going into the off-field lives of the players and cheerleaders, as the MTV version did.

Posted by Milton Kent at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

It stood to reason that someone locally would jump on the bandwagon of televising high school football. We should all thank our lucky stars that Comcast stepped into the breach.

The cable giant's own CN8, the Comcast Network, announced this week that it would begin airing a slate of games played in the Maryland-Virginia-Washington D.C. region, beginning with tape-delay coverage of Saturday's Severn-Archbishop Spalding game at 7 p.m.

If you are a satellite subscriber or find yourself somehow out of the Comcast sphere of influence, fear not, for the high school football package will be available live online at www.CN8.tv. In addition, each game will be available through the On Demand feature for up to a week after it airs and for no charge.

Posted by Milton Kent at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Welcome to the latest Baltimore Sun blog, a space for thoughts and commentary on high school sports and the people who play, coach and administer them.

The postings here typically will be ideas that might fall short of a full column, but nonetheless are worth exploring. And rest assured, unlike some television stations that have jumped lately into high school coverage, we won't be advocating booing opponents here.

That said, three cheers to Channel 11 weather forecaster Sandra Shaw for spending part of her morning today at Catonsville with the field hockey and boys and girls soccer teams, as well as some football players. It's easy to forget that there are other varsity sports played in high schools these days other than football and just about anything that shines a spotlight on those teams is a good thing.

Still, we might suggest to Shaw for future visits that she appear in something other than a Ravens jersey and that she know who the previous night's opponent is before talking about the game, as she had to be corrected on the field hockey match last night against Wilde Lake.

Actually, Shaw's plugging of the field hockey and girls soccer teams dovetails nicely with an announcement this week that for the first time more than 3 million girls nationwide participated in sports last year.

The National Federation of State High School Associations reported this week that just over 3.021 million girls played high school sports in the 2006-07 academic year, more than in any previous year.

More than 4.32 million boys participated in high school sports programs last year, the second-highest figure in the past 29 years.The overall total of 7.342 million kids playing sports is up 183,000 from 2005-06, the biggest single year rise in 12 years.

We'll break down participation in individual sports in subsequent posts.

By the way, while this is a high school blog, we commend to the attention of any coach, parent or prospective athlete this week's Monday Morning Quarterback column from Sports Illustrated's Peter King.

Of particular note is the first item from a now former Washington Redskins player about the feeling of being cut and having your career end. It's the side of the game that few in sports talk about, namely how to separate yourself from something you love.

Posted by Milton Kent at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)