Middies

They're midshipmen, straight-backed, book-cracking, Naval officers in training.They're also teen-agers and, as such, they carry strong appetites for Nintendo, MTV and many sandwiches washed down with case after case of soda. To hear Mike Mulloy, a second-year middie from Truckee, Calif., there's no better place to lunch on four turkey-and-cheese-on-kaisers than the Morans' house in Severna Park.Shirley Moran says she draws stares at the supermarket deli counter, but she finds her orders of pound upon pound of lunch meat funny.

No. 17 Navy has won 28 of 30 contests in this series between Patriot League foes, but No. 8 Lehigh did win last year's meeting. The Mountain Hawks (9-1 overall and 2-0 in the conference) are riding an eight-game winning streak. The Midshipmen (5-3, 3-1) are seeking their first five-game run since 2008. Here are a few factors that could influence the outcome at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis on Friday night. 1) Faceoffs. Lehigh is led by junior Ryan Snyder, who has won 54.3 percent of his faceoffs (82-of-151)

The Naval Academy's second 1990 football season opens tomorrow when the Middies travel West into the rarefied atmosphere of Colorado Springs, Colo., for the annual service academy battle with the Air Force Academy.It's not quite Army-Navy, but awfully close to it. Home Team Sports will televise the game at 2:05 p.m.It will be the opening salvo for this year's Commander-In-Chief's trophy -- symbolic of football supremacy between Navy, Army and Air Force -- and an automatic bowl bid.The smaller Merchant Marine and Coast Guard academies also field creditable football teams but do not compete at this level of competition, although some years they would not have been too overmatched.

A pair of developments that went largely unnoticed in Towson's 12-6 loss to No. 2 Johns Hopkins a week ago was the absences of senior attackman Matt Lamon and sophomore Andrew Hodgson from the starting lineup. Junior Dan Kramer made his first start of the season, joining junior Matt Hughes and senior Sean Maguire on attack. Senior Michael Brashears was added to the first midfield of sophomore Thomas DeNapoli and freshman Justin Mabus. Coach Shawn Nadelen did not provide much detail on Hughes' demotion, saying only, “Dan Kramer got his opportunity there.” But Nadelen was more expansive about Hodgson's absence.

Chartwell resident and Severn School graduate John R. Quinn has been placed in one of the most prestigious and demanding positions at the U.S. Naval Academy: in command of more than half the academy's 4,500-member brigade of midshipmen."

While waiting for tomorrow's 4:30 p.m. kickoff in Toledo's Glass Bowl against the tough 8-1 Rockets, here are some afterthoughts of Navy's classic rebound against national leader Notre Dame.Agreed, a "moral" victory plus a quarter are worth about a 25-cent telephone call. However, the extraordinary effort of the Navy football team and the coaching staff in battling a technically and physically far superior (and 34-point favorite) Notre Dame squad last week gave Middie supporters hope for better things to come.

Cherry blossoms are slow this spring but the Birds are on time.If everyone who can't get tickets would hang around outside the stadium, Jesse Jackson would have one heck of a picket line.Profile in Courage: Bill faced Annapolis middies, Oregon lumberjacks and Boris Yeltsin in three successive days.

When Navy joins the Patriot League next fall, Pete Herrmann will still be the Middies' basketball coach.Despite a five-year record of 57-88, Herrmann was given a new contract yesterday. Neither he nor athletic director Jack Lengyel would disclose the contract's terms, including its duration. Herrmann did say he was "pleased" with it.Navy's Patriot League opponents will be Fordham, Colgate, Holy Cross, Army, Lafayette, Lehigh and Bucknell. The Middies played their final Colonial Athletic Association game Sunday, losing to George Mason in overtime in the tournament semifinals.

IF THE U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis can play one of its biggest football games in Dublin -- as it did Saturday -- why not in nearby Baltimore?And since the Middies are already set to play Notre Dame at Jack Kent Cooke's new Landover stadium in two years, it makes sense to move the game to Baltimore's new stadium in 2000.Navy should alternate its big football contests -- especially Army and Notre Dame -- in the large stadiums being built at Landover and Baltimore. That way, the Navy team could develop strong local followings in both regions.

DON'T name them the Crows, Buzzards, Rockfish, Old Bays, Middies, Raccoons, Ponies, Bawlamorons, Bangles, A-rabbers, Sea Nettles, Sons of the Colts, Readers or even the Marble Steps.The world is a safer place. Taiwan recognizes China.The city that reads has no need for libraries.And the Oscar for long-distance running to Bob Dole!Pub Date: 3/27/96

Mount St. Mary's has almost three weeks before opening the season at Delaware on Feb. 25, but it appears that there's an early leader in the clubhouse for the spot as the third starting defenseman. Sophomore Shane Pierce is competing with sophomore Tim Durkin and freshman Kyle Bryant, but for now, coach Tom Gravante said Pierce is in line to join senior Brendan Rooney and junior Kevin Downs as the starting defensemen. The defense met Lehigh in a scrimmage two weeks ago without Rooney (sore hamstring)

Playing midfield for the No. 15 Bel Air boys lacrosse team, sophomore Parker Jones wants to make a difference every chance he gets. It could be scoring a goal, dishing out an assist, scooping up a ground ball or playing smart defense. If he had his choice, he would never leave the field. In his second year on varsity, Jones has 24 goals, 15 assists and 88 ground balls as the Bobcats (12-2) prepare for a run at a state title. In addition to lacrosse, Jones also was the team captain for the school's junior varsity basketball team last season, playing forward and guard.

— In the end, Navy head coach Richie Meade had to face reality, because there isn't a lot left for his lacrosse team. After a strong first-half performance, Navy was outscored by eight goals in the second, as Army rebounded for a 14-9 victory before a crowd of 8,059 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium Saturday. The loss was the third in a row by Navy (4-8) to Army (8-4) and the worst defeat in the 90-game series since losing 15-8 in 1996. The Middies are now out of contention for the four-team Patriot League tournament for the first time since 2004, which means they have no shot at an NCAA playoff berth.

— Sure has been a strange month for Navy. Three weeks ago, the Midshipmen were on top of the world with a 35-17 upset win over Notre Dame at New Meadowlands Stadium. They followed that with the mother of all let-downs, losing at home to Duke, 34-31, in a game in which they trailed 24-0 at halftime. And they followed that with a 76-35 shellacking of East Carolina, the most points by a Navy team since 1919. (That was the year the Middies beat Colby, 120-0, which should have left Colby thinking about dropping football for, say, croquet.

The two schools sit blocks apart in downtown Annapolis. Yet students from the U.S. Naval Academy and St. John's College seldom mix. "Johnnies" lead an insular life, devouring the "Great Books." Midshipmen follow a regimented schedule that affords few liberties and little free time. Preconceptions of Mids as crew-cut hawks and Johnnies as tie-dyed doves leave each side vaguely uneasy with the other. The social impasse cried out for a diplomatic solution. And so began the annual Johnnie-Mid Seminar, a sort of scholarly summit.

Please forgive the irrepressible grins, the sunny outlook and the other outward signs of deep satisfaction displayed this week by fans of U.S. Naval Academy football. Navy's 46-44 triple-overtime victory over the Fighting Irish on Saturday in South Bend, Ind., was bound to have a lasting effect. Beating a rival once every 43 years will do that. The Notre Dame-Navy match-up is one of the more lopsided annual events in college football. One fields a team of high school all-Americans, the other with future Navy and Marine Corps officers.

ANNAPOLIS -- A word of advice to the Naval Academy: Don't schedule James Madison for homecoming anymore. Maybe the Middies should try a Division II team next season.For the second straight year, the Division I-AA Dukes handed Navy a humbling, if not humiliating, defeat before 29,129 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium."I think James Madison's the worst thing to happen to Navy since Pearl Harbor," Dukes coach Joe Purzycki said after yesterday's 16-7 victory.Allow Purzycki his moment of tasteless overstatement.

The 21-21 tie in 1926 is generally acknowledged as the best game in the Army-Navy series. A rundown on what are arguably the best five of the 90 games played:* 1926, Chicago: Army 21, Navy 21 -- Before 110,000 in Soldier Field, the largest crowd ever to watch a college football game, unbeaten Navy claimed the national championship by tying once-beaten (by Notre Dame) Army. The Middies took a 14-0 lead, but the Cadets, with Lighthorse Harry Wilson and Chris Cagle leading the charge, surged ahead in the third quarter, 21-14.

Navy sophomore Geoff Leone was living a nightmare only a defensive midfielder knows. Under 80-degree sunshine at Homewood Field, with the Johns Hopkins offense taking constant aim at him, Leone was fading fast as he tried to overcome painful leg cramps. The Blue Jays were dominating possession time and relentlessly attacking the Mids' short-stick defenders - especially Leone. During a second-half comeback that led to a 10-9 Hopkins victory, Blue Jays midfielder Brian Christopher took Leone behind the net, ran past him, circled the crease and scored.

It strikes me as a stretch to claim that the Naval Academy denied Frank Shannon a commission and diploma "because he failed a running test by 20 seconds" ("For ex-mid, academy saga `doesn't add up'," Nov. 23), especially when the article notes that Mr. Shannon accumulated a record of 12 failures in 18 attempts to pass his physical fitness test. I couldn't agree more with the Shannons that the football steroid saga has a nasty smell to it, as does any suspicion of a college putting its athletes' achievements before society's standards.