National Team

This morning, when perennial power Germany takes on upstart United States in a World Cup quarterfinal game, Peter Senica will be facing an unusual, delicate dilemma. Growing up in the small town of Racklinghausen, Senica was on the German national team's reserve roster as a 20-year-old goalkeeper in 1974 when the squad won the second of its three World Cup championships. But he has been in the United States for 20 years now, all in the Baltimore area. He's a vice president at Allfirst Bank, with a wife, Lisa, and a soccer-playing daughter, Jamie, who is 12. Senica, 48, has closely watched the U.S. national team grow and has thus grown attached.

Thori Staples wasn't surprised when she heard the stories about the arrival of the U.S. women's national team after winning the 1991 World Championship in China.After capturing the first major honor in world soccer, the team was greeted at the airport by . . . no one. There wasn't a huge welcoming rally. Not even one television camera or reporter.What's surprising to Staples is how the sport has changed in four years. The national team is set to defend its title in Sweden today in a first-round game against China, and now it seems as if everyone knows about its success.

Impressions can be immediate as well as lasting. Thori Bryan, the central defender from the reigning Women's United Soccer Association champion San Jose CyberRays, makes both rather effectively. The Joppatowne High grad, formerly Thori Staples, relies on her speed and athleticism to shut down opposing attacks. One other thing is certain: She's always going to be back there. Always. Bryan, 28, has the distinction of being the only player in the WUSA to have played every minute of her team's games since the league's inception last year.

They've gotten to the brink of the Olympics as a team. Now gymnast Courtney Kupets and her coach, Kelli Hill, will go the rest of the way together. For Kupets, the two-time national champion from Gaithersburg who also won the Olympic trials, last night's announcement of her place on the Athens-bound squad was a formality. But team officials also selected Hill, Kupets' personal coach and the outspoken head coach of the 2000 team, to reprise that role next month. Hill, 44, is the U.S. coach with the most international experience and is best known for training gold medallist Dominique Dawes of Silver Spring and 2000 Olympian Elise Ray of Columbia.

ATLANTA -- The Centennial Olympic Games were all about women in sport, from the dramatic performance of tiny gymnast Kerri Strug, to the record crowd of 76,481 that attended the women's soccer final, and yesterday to the roof-raising gold medal performance of the U.S. women's basketball team.Male track stars Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson may have dominated the headlines for a few days, but the XXVI Olympiad featured more female athletes than ever before, and featured more American achievements by female athletes than come easily to memory.

American pro soccer's aggressive signing of top-flight college underclassmen broadened yesterday and hit, among other campuses, the University of Maryland for the second time in two weeks.Maryland, which lost last fall's starting goalkeeper, sophomore Andy Kirk, to Major League Soccer on Jan. 14, also has lost standout junior midfielder Judah Cooks, the league announced yesterday. Both were among seven recently signed players MLS either identified or assigned to MLS teams yesterday.Another was Columbia's Brian West (Centennial)

Player of the Year Ali Andrzejewski, McDonogh: The senior midfielder simply played at a different level than her All-City/County peers. In her third year on the first team, Andrzejewski led the No. 2 Eagles (16-5) in scoring with 20 goals and 15 assists, but that barely begins to tap her value to the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference finalists. She is a U.S. Youth Soccer Association Under-19 national team player. "Ali brings everything to the table," said her coach Maurice Boylan Jr. "Leadership, drive, competitiveness, skill -- she's electric with the ball and can hurt you in a flash."

Who is in your preseason Final Four? Maryland, definitely. Oklahoma is a team that will be there in the end. I think it will be Duke or Carolina. I don't think we'll see what happened last year, as far as three ACC teams making it. It will be one of those two, and if they are able to stay healthy, I would say Tennessee. Who is the preseason national Player of the Year? [Tennessee's] Candace Parker is the best player in the country. Anybody, to me, that thinks there's another player than her clearly didn't watch her play this summer with the national team.

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. With Mark Turgeon's team starting summer workouts, which Terps have the most to gain and the most to lose? Don Markus: This is a critical summer for Turgeon's program. Though many, including Turgeon, see progress in going from 17-15 in his first season in College Park to finishing his second year with a 25-13 record after a trip to the NIT semifinals, most Terp fans (and Turgeon)

A Tampa-based company plans to begin offering flights next spring from BWI-Marshall Airport to Cuba, where travel has been restricted since 1961, shortly after Fidel Castro took power and nationalized U.S.-owned businesses. But visitors shouldn't count on buying tickets solely to explore the island's beaches. "You cannot go to Cuba for what they call tourism," said William Hauf, president of Island Travel & Tours Ltd., which announced plans for the flights Friday. The Island Travel trips are considered charters, though they will operate at fixed times on Wednesdays much like scheduled airline flights.