Dunbar

The Dunbar gym was sweltering during the Poets' boys basketball game against Baltimore City rival Edmondson earlier this season. It wasn't any different than countless other nights in past decades when the team had a big matchup, but the atmosphere was still new to Dunbar's transfer guard Daxter Miles. "There was a lot of emotions involved, a different vibe. That was the game so far," Miles said. "I know a lot about Poet Pride. You can see from all the banners on our wall. … It's great tradition here and an honor for me to play here.

Horse racing Retired Hall of Fame trainer Kelly dead at 93 Hall of Fame trainer Thomas J. Kelly died Friday morning at St. Catherine's West Rehabilitation Hospital in Hialeah, Fla., after a brief illness, according to his son, Timothy D. Kelly . He was 93. Kelly, who was born in Pikesville, conditioned 65 stakes winners, including Plugged Nickle, 1980's champion sprinter who won that year's Grade 1 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct Racetrack,...

The Benjamin G Eaton Coaches Clinic, sponsored by Clearpath Academics, will be held at Dunbar on June 22. Maryland coach Randy Edsall will present the morning keynote address and Towson coach Rob Ambrose will present the afternoon address. Among the other workshops, West Virginia wide receivers coach Lonnie Galloway will present on “Wide Receiver Fundamentals,” Maryland running backs coach Andre Powell on “Running Back Drills With a Purpose,” Dunbar defensive coordinator Michael Carter on “Eliminating Explosive Gains,” and Calvert Hall coach Donald Davis on “Rebuilding a Program.” For more information, click here .

Dunbar junior quarterback William Crest verbally committed to West Virginia on Friday, according to multiple reports. Crest helped the Poets win the Class 1A state championship last fall, throwing for two touchdowns in Dunbar's 39-0 victory over New Town at M&T Bank Stadium. He threw 14 touchdown passes overall last season as the Poets went 13-1 to win their third straight 1A title. Rivals.com ranks Crest as a four-star prospect and the No. 205 overall recruit in the Class of 2014, while Scout.com has him as a three-star prospect and the No. 30 quarterback in the graduating class.

Dunbar (7-1, 5-1 Baltimore City Division I) vs. Poly (6-2, 5-1) at Mervo When : Saturday, 6 p.m. Coaches : Lawrence Smith, Dunbar; Roger Wrenn, Poly Last meeting : Dunbar 22-18, 2009 regular season Key players to watch : Dunbar — DeonTay McManus, Jr., WR/FS (seven TDs — two on punt returns, one on an INT return, three receiving and one rushing, 17 catches for 329 yards); Travon Garrett, Sr., TE/LB (73 tackles); Aaron Haynes, Jr., DB (four INT, one returned for a TD)

After 14 years as Dunbar's baseball coach, Don Gilbert has decided to take a break. "I have decided to leave now and watch my son, who is a rising senior baseball college prospect player at Glen Burnie High School," Gilbert said. "I have not had the opportunity to see him play that much, so I need to leave coaching at Dunbar to do so. " The Poets went 17-1 this past season and ranked No. 15 in The Baltimore Sun's final baseball poll. Gilbert said it was his best "team" because it had "a little less talent, but great chemistry.

After playing almost all of its games on the road in recent years, Dunbar's football team will finally get a chance to protect its own house. Under Armour announced Thursday that it will fund the construction of a new football field at the Baltimore City school, which has developed into a state powerhouse despite having to play most of its “home” games at Poly. “I don't have words [to describe my excitement],” first-year Dunbar principal Kristina Kyles said. “It still hasn't hit me how excited I'll be to tell our kids.” Kyles said the school was among five in Baltimore that the Locust Point-based apparel company was considering to award with such renovations.

Friday night lights will turn on at high school football fields all over the Baltimore area this week as public school teams play their first games. A few private schools already have opened their seasons, but a full slate of games will kick off Friday night, so it's time to see which teams are projected to be the area's best. From today through the rest of the week, we'll count down to No. 1 with a daily roll out of The Baltimore Sun's Top 5 preseason teams. The entire Top 15 poll, along with a look at the top players to watch, will be published Friday in The Baltimore Sun and on baltimoresun.com Today we start with a look at our No. 5 team, two-time defending Class 1A state champion Dunbar.

The 5-foot-9 junior forward became only the fifth player in the 39-year history of the girls' state basketball tournament to score 40 or more points in a single game. Her 40-point, 21-rebound performance in Saturday's 80-62 Class 1A title-game victory over Northern of Garrett County led the No. 4 Poets to the fifth state crown in school history. Wright, who averaged 21 points and eight rebounds going into the tournament, also had 26 points and eight rebounds in the 62-54 semifinal upset of then-No.

The level of interest Morgan State had in Donte Pretlow was never in doubt. For more than a year, members of the Bears coaching staff have seemingly been tracking the Dunbar point guard's every move. “They have been involved with him for awhile,” said Poets coach Cyrus Jones . “I would say they came around last year and really took an interest after that. They followed him last summer when he played AAU with Nike Baltimore Elite. It just continued during his senior year.” Pretlow rewarded Morgan's loyalty and persistence last week with his commitment.

Former Maryland basketball star and assistant coach Keith Booth, who has spent the past two years as an assistant women's coach at Loyola, was added Tuesday to the men's staff by newly named men's head coach G.G. Smith. Booth, 38, left College Park after Gary Williams retired in 2011 and Mark Turgeon retained only one member of the previous staff, Bino Ranson.  Booth, who grew up in Baltimore and starred at Dunbar, wanted to stay in the area with his daughter in high school and took a job on the women's team.

Since graduating from Dunbar in 2010, Corey Spence has lived in Maine, Texas and Wyoming. Starting this summer, the 5-foot-10, 175-pound point guard will make his home in Colorado. On Monday, Spence committed to Northern Colorado over Liberty. The former Poets star was also recruited by Cal State Bakersfield, Florida Atlantic, Nebraska Omaha, Northern Arizona and San Francisco. “I'm glad to get it all over with and finally [have] found a Division I scholarship,” Spence said Tuesday.

Editor's note: Each week, InsideMdSports.com provides this blog with a Maryland recruiting feature that previously appeared as premium content on its site. Highly touted 2014 quarterback William Crest didn't have to travel to College Park to get a good look at the Maryland football team. The Terps, who practiced at Dunbar on Saturday, came to him. Crest walked up and down the sidelines of the Poets' field Saturday, taking in the Terps' ninth spring practice and imagining what it might be like to suit up for the hometown school.

Hundreds of fans packed into the bleachers at Dunbar's football field Saturday afternoon, and dozens more looked on through the fence. They were there to see the Maryland football team play its first of two scrimmages at local high schools. And on the first drive of the day, they weren't disappointed. On the scrimmage's opening play, quarterback Ricardo Young found wide receiver Deon Long down the left sideline for a 70-yard gain. Seconds later, running back Brandon Ross rumbled into the end zone for a 5-yard score.

Randy Edsall has been committed to growing Maryland's brand ever since he took the job in College Park more than two years ago. The state flag was already printed across the Byrd Stadium end zones when he arrived on campus, but that wasn't enough. The football coach unveiled state flag-inspired "Maryland Pride" uniforms for his first game on the sideline and replaced the Terps moniker with Maryland on both the field and jerseys. On Saturday afternoon, he'll unveil another part of his plan.

Randy Edsall is a football coach, not a marketing guy, but he's got the lingo down. Ask him why the Maryland football team is practicing Saturday at Dunbar, and he says it's all about growing the Terps brand in this area and throughout the rest of the state, too. "What we need to do is make sure we're going out and meeting the people and being visible in the Baltimore community, rather than expecting people to come to us," he says....

Breathing a collective sigh of relief before celebrating, Maryland's most prolific boys basketball team - Dunbar - added to the program's legacy in Saturday's Class 1A state championship game at the University of Maryland's Comcast Center. With a hard-fought 54-52 win over No. 9 New Town in a rematch of last year's title game, the No. 1 Dunbar captured its state record 15th Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association championship. Combined with their 20 Maryland Scholastic Association championships prior to joining the MPSSAA in the 1992-93 school year, the Poets now have 35 championships.

Dunbar could do just about anything it wanted against Washington in Friday's Class 1A state semifinal. The Poets had a large advantage in size, speed and strength. In other words, they were just too much. The Jaguars, from Somerset County, scored the game's first basket, but the rest of the evening belonged to No. 1 Dunbar. The Poets needed only four minutes to increase their lead to 10 points, and they didn't have much trouble in a 70-41 victory over Washington at the University of Maryland's Comcast Center.