Football Player

I am saddened by the presentation of Ray Lewis of the Ravens as a hero. He is nothing more than a very talented athlete ("Ray's day," Jan. 7). Where are our priorities? Ray Lewis has six children by four different mothers, skated away from his 2000 manslaughter debacle by snitching on his "friends," and four years later settled out of court with the families of the two men that were killed in the bar brawl. The clothes he wore that night were never found. He loves to say that he is a Christian.

It wasn't so long ago that former Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand couldn't even move his shoulders, which is why it's hard not to marvel at his willingness to offer one of them to anybody facing a major life challenge. If you don't know his story, you probably missed last year's ESPY Awards or walked past the aisle at Barnes and Noble where his two books are on display. He was the 20-year-old special teams player who suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a 2010 game against Army at MetLife Stadium that left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Edwin F. Royston, who played two years as a guard for the New York Giants in the late 1940s and was a shipbuilding executive, died of cancer Saturday at his home in Seaside Park, N.J. He was 87 and had lived in Highlandtown. Born in Baltimore and raised on Macon Street, he was a 1941 graduate of Patterson Park High School, where he played football. He was nominated for the 1940 Unsung Hero Award. While at the school, he met his future wife, the former Virginia Garner. He served in the Navy during World War II and then earned a physics degree from Wake Forest University, where he was named All Southern guard in 1947 and co-captain of the team.

On a recent sunny, picturesque Sunday morning in Owings Mills, there was a flurry of activity on the practice fields outside the Ravens' team facility. Bird songs occasionally pierced the chirping of whistles, whirring of portable generators and the grunts of large men bumping into each other. The Ravens were wrapping up their three-day rookie minicamp, and their new 10-man draft class, dozens of undrafted rookie free agents and a handful of 2012 practice squad members were buzzing as coaches conducted drills at several different stations across the practice fields.

On a recent sunny, picturesque Sunday morning in Owings Mills, there was a flurry of activity on the practice fields outside the Ravens' team facility. Bird songs occasionally pierced the chirping of whistles, whirring of portable generators and the grunts of large men bumping into each other. The Ravens were wrapping up their three-day rookie minicamp, and their new 10-man draft class, dozens of undrafted rookie free agents and a handful of 2012 practice squad members were buzzing as coaches conducted drills at several different stations across the practice fields.

The 19-year-old man shot inside the Morgan State University student center Wednesday was on campus visiting his cousin, a member of the school's football team, according to Baltimore police. It was a football player who first spotted the victim, said Donald Hill-Eley, Morgan State's head football coach. The player, whom Hill-Eley would not identify, saw the victim collapse outside the student center, he said. The player described the victim as bleeding profusely from the mouth and torso.

Warren Hartenstine is a Penn State graduate who played football for Coach Joe Paterno. He is a long-time resident of Harford County and a respected member of the local business community. He wrote a letter to the chair of the Penn State Board of Trustees. A copy was provided for publication. Ms. Karen B. Peetz Chairman, Penn State Board of Trustees Chairman Peetz: I know something about childhood sexual abuse personally, professionally and as a volunteer. I know something about Jerry Sandusky and the incredulity that enabled him. He was my student recruiter and then teammate.

Carroll County's first female high school football player -- who was seriously injured in a 1989 practice game -- can't hold the county school board responsible for her injuries, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals said yesterday.Upholding a Carroll Circuit judge's dismissal of Tawana Hammond's $1.2 million lawsuit against the board, the appellate court disputed Ms. Hammond's contention that she was owed a warning about the dangers of football."The central theory espoused by the Hammonds, that the school board had a duty to warn them of the severe injuries that might result from voluntarily participating on a varsity high school tackle football team, is one that, as far as we can determine, has never been adopted by any court in this country," Judge Diana G. Motz wrote for the court in an 11-page opinion.

A Carroll judge has thrown out a lawsuit in which the county's first female high school football player -- who was seriously injured in a 1989 practice game -- sought $1.25 million from the school board because she said she wasn't adequately warned of the sport's dangers.In a ruling that attorneys in the case learned of yesterday, Circuit Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. granted summary judgment for the school board. He said Tawana and Peggy Hammond, the football player and her mother, "knew about the risks of serious, disabling and catastrophic injury assumed" by varsity football players and they "chose to expose the player to those risks anyway."

WASHINGTON -- In a marathon day in court that foreshadowed the key elements of a former Navy football player's military trial on sexual misconduct charges, prosecution and defense lawyers whittled down a potential jury pool from 15 officers to four yesterday. The Naval Academy officers answered detailed, personal questions on a variety of topics, including Navy football, sexual assault at the academy, the definition of "indecent" sex and the credibility of an alleged victim who admitted to drinking alcohol underage and who did not cry out for help while she was allegedly being assaulted.

Sarah Dorl and James Frieson both regularly took care of many jobs that helped their respective teams, tasks that wouldn't show up in a score sheet. But the work Dorl did for the Dulaney basketball team and Frieson put in for Towson football finally earned some notice Monday night when they won top honors at the 73rd Annual McCormick Unsung Heroes Awards banquet at the Hunt Valley Inn. Dorl and Frieson became the 70th and 71st winners of the Charles Perry McCormick Scholarship, established in 1969.

More than 100 student athletes from 73 Baltimore-area  high schools will be honored Monday night at the 73 rd Annual McCormick Unsung Heroes Award Banquet at the Hunt Valley Inn. One football player and one girls basketball player will be awarded the Charles Perry McCormick scholarships, valued at $36,000 over four years of college. They keynote speaker will be best-selling author Wes Moore, whose book 'The Other Wes Moore" is set to be made into a movie. An paratrooper with the Army in Afghanistan, Moore played football at Johns Hopkins, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001.

Last September, Van Brooks walked for the first time in eight years. A wobbly video, recorded on a smartphone and posted on Facebook, shows the lower body of an undeterrable young man. Legs violently shaking as he refuses to accept his initial diagnosis, Brooks clings to a walker while his weight is supported by a harness attached to the ceiling. Wearing white tube socks and a pair of Converse All Stars, Brooks slowly takes a small step forward. His left foot quivers as he strains to straighten it and complete the step.

Brandon Dixon, Adam Greene, Brady Orem and Marc Badger all are very good football players. But this group of seniors can do so much more, and they were recognized for those talents Wednesday night. They were selected as regional winners at the 50th Annual Scholar Athlete Awards Dinner at Martin's West. Each received a $4,000 scholarship from The Greater Baltimore Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. The dinner was originally scheduled for March 6, but it was pushed back two weeks because of a storm forecasted forthat night.

"Now is the time... " -- Martin Luther King, Aug. 28, 1963 Brendon Ayanbadejo is wrong. It is painful to say that. Mr. Ayanbadejo's heart is in a good place, and the advice he gave recently on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" was practical and well intentioned. But mainly, yes, it was wrong. Here's the back story. It seems NFL prospect Nick Kasa recently told ESPN Radio that he was asked in an interview with a team he won't specify whether he is married, if he has a girlfriend and whether he likes girls.

Baltimore Sun reporters Jeff Barker and Don Markus and editor Matt Bracken weigh in on the three biggest topics of the past week in Maryland sports.   Who could be some of the surprise players to emerge from spring practice for the Terps? Don Markus: Listening to Randy Edsall talk about his team at a news conference Monday, there are several potential candidates. I think one of the most interesting stories headed into the team's first practice Saturday is freshman cornerback and return specialist Will Likely, who enrolled a semester early after graduating from high school.

The Atlantic Coast Conference today announced that Maryland fullback Tyler Cierski, offensive lineman Bennett Fulper, linebacker Cole Farrand and punter Nathan Renfro were named to the 2012 All-ACC Academic Football team. It's Fulper's third selection, Cierski's second selection and Farrand's and Renfro's first selection. The Terps had the fourth-most selections in the ACC. Duke finished first with 21 players. Clemson was second with six players, and N.C. State was third with five. The teams were selected from a pool of 104 eligible student-athletes across the conference's 12 teams, and athletes needed to have earned a 3.0 grade point average in the previous semester and have a cumulative 3.0 average to be considered.

Vernon E. Seibert, a former athletic director and coach at Glenelg High School who had been an outstanding football player during the 1940s at College Park, died Saturday of cancer at Union Hospital in Elkton. The longtime Columbia resident was 88. "You could write a book about Vernon Seibert. What a character. The stories about him are legend," said Dennis P. Cole, who had been head football coach at Glenelg in the 1980s and retired five years ago. "He was always held in high-esteem but was not the kind of buddy-buddy type of football coach when it came to the kids," he said.