April 25, 2012|By Edward Lee
The Tewaaraton Foundation announced Wednesday afternoon that the list of candidates for the annual honor given to the collegiate top player has been whittled down to 25 names.
No. 1 Loyola and No. 13 Johns Hopkins are two of five programs with two representatives on the list. The Greyhounds are represented by junior attackman Mike Sawyer and junior long-stick midfielder Scott Ratliff, while the Blue Jays have a pair of candidates in junior goalkeeper Pierce Bassett and junior defenseman Tucker Durkin.
The other schools with two candidates each are No. 2 Masschusetts (senior attackman Anthony Biscardi and junior attackman Will Manny), No. 6 Virginia (senior attackman Steele Stanwick and redshirt senior midfielder Colin Briggs) and No. 14 Princeton (senior goalie Tyler Fiorito and sophomore midfielder Tom Schreiber).
No. 8 Maryland is represented by junior long-stick midfielder Jesse Bernhardt, and Salisbury – the reigning nine-time national champion and current top-ranked team in Division III – has a candidate in senior midfielder Sam Bradman.
Junior attackman Marcus Holman, a Baltimore native and Gilman graduate who plays for No. 5 North Carolina, is the only other local representative.
What’s noteworthy is the absence of Cornell’s Rob Pannell, last year’s National Attackman of the Year and the frontrunner to win the Tewaaraton before Stanwick claimed the honor by powering the Cavaliers to their fourth national championship. Pannell has not played since March 3 when he reportedly broke a bone in his left foot.
