One of the most anticipated showdowns of the early football season won't have an impact on a league championship, but the outcome could end up assigning bragging rights in the Baltimore-Washington area.
No. 2 Gilman hosts DeMatha at 7 Friday night at Cardinal Gibbons in what has become a hot rivalry over the past 10 years. DeMatha, a perennial powerhouse from Hyattsville, is ranked No. 1 by The Washington Post and in the MdVarsity Media State Poll. The Greyhounds (2-0) are No. 4 in the MdVarsity poll.
"I think our kids feel like DeMatha is the best private school in the D.C. area and they feel that we're probably the best in the Baltimore area, so it's a great kind of rivalry," Gilman coach Biff Poggi said. "What it is, is wanting to test ourselves. We're the only school around here that wants to play them that doesn't have to, and we've been doing it for 10 years."
DeMatha (1-0) leads the series 6-4, but the teams have split their past four meetings.
Gilman won last season, 21-14, in an upset after Darius Jennings scored the winning touchdown on a 58-yard run midway through the fourth quarter. In 2007, the Stags romped, 42-0.
Poggi said this Stags team has the talent to rival that exceptional 2007 team, with 15 players committed to NCAA Division I programs and more likely to commit. Gilman has two: Anthony Ferguson and Jim Poggi, who are headed to Iowa, as is DeMatha's Marcus Coker.
The Greyhounds wanted to play a day game with DeMatha at Gilman, but Poggi moved the game to 7 p.m. to accommodate the DeMatha staff, several of whom work other jobs and would have had difficulty making it to Baltimore earlier.
Owls join Nyborg field
Westminster is the latest team to join the field of the highly competitive Sally E. Nyborg Field Hockey Invitational on Saturday at Roland Park.
The round-robin tournament includes some of the state's best teams, including No. 2 Severna Park, which has won a record 18 state titles; No. 10 Fallston, which has 11 state championships; Bethesda-Chevy Chase, which owns 13 state crowns, and St. Stephen's/St. Agnes from Alexandria, Va.
The tournament, named for the Reds player who died of complications from lupus in May 1998, began the next fall. Each tournament has raised money for lupus research. Even in the two years it had to be canceled - after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and because of a hurricane in 2003 - some teams donated their entry fees. Roland Park coach D ebbie Bloodsworth said the tournament, which grew from four to six teams last season, has been a great way to bring teams together that would not normally play one another.
