Recruiting

Here's part of a Q&A with Jeff Ermann of TurtleSportsReport.com: With the news that Maryland is not a part of Terrence Jennings' top five, have the Terps stopped recruiting the big man? If that's the case, what went wrong here? And what do you make of him leaving Mount Zion for Notre Dame Prep? No, the staff is still actively pursuing, it seems. As to what went wrong here, well, that's a long [story]. Jennings is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a middle-of-the-night when-the-coach-isn't-looking high school transfer.

A critical shortage of qualified Baltimore schoolteachers has prompted the Abell Foundation to team with a local developer who plans to renovate a vacant Charles Village apartment building for young teachers.The Astor Court, at the southwest corner of St. Paul and 25th streets, could become a recruiting tool for school officials looking to attract young people apprehensive about moving to the city.The idea is as old as the country. Settlers once guaranteed housing for young schoolteachers who would move west to the frontier.

The second recruitment of Tamir Goodman is expected to be more deliberate than the first.Goodman became national news when the 6-foot-3 guard accepted a basketball scholarship offer from Maryland in January, but their relationship soured, and on Friday the senior at Takoma Academy said he would play elsewhere next season.Several mid-major programs are recruiting Goodman, an Orthodox Jew whose observance of the Sabbath prohibits him from playing or practicing from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

Chief Petty Officer Will Cawley is working overtime on the faded blocks of West Baltimore, trying to coax the next generation into the Navy fleet. His chief obstacle is not competition from a robust economy; it's drugs and poor education.Working from a storefront recruiting station off Pratt Street, Cawley rejects more than half the would-be sailors because of their persistent drug use or inability to pass the military's general-knowledge entrance test."What do they learn in school?" asks an exasperated Cawley, a third-generation serviceman from the Eastern Shore.

Maybe Johnny can't read.But he has a nasty crossover move, and he's done Vegas.College basketball is loaded with contradictions: Players represent institutions of higher learning, but March Madness is more about entertainment than education. Games are played in winter, but programs can be built or destroyed in July.The recruiting of elite talent is no longer focused on high schools, but at summer camps and tournaments primarily sponsored by shoe companies. In July and September, teen-agers travel thousands of miles while marketing themselves to college coaches.

With the letter-of-intent signing period a week away, the Maryland football team's recruiting efforts turned in some mixed results this past week.First, the Terrapins made a major breakthrough by receiving their first oral commitment from a quarterback, Calvin McCall, widely considered one of the top athletes in Florida.But the Terps then took a step back when Jay Chapman, a wide receiver out of Anacostia High in Washington, backed out of his oral commitment to the Terps. One of the fastest players in the D.C. area, Chapman has said he is leaning toward Syracuse.

Two years ago, they were a team of seniors resting on laurels acquired mostly by the departed Joe Smith.Last year, they were a team of tired overachievers, having peaked in late January.This year, for the first time since Smith was at center, the Maryland Terrapins are on the rise, unmistakably, as March begins."Do you like your team?" coach Gary Williams was asked after the Terps' 83-66 victory over Temple yesterday before a sellout crowd at the Baltimore Arena."Oh, absolutely," Williams said with a conviction that wasn't there the past two years.

Towson State football coach Gordy Combs said he hadn't done much smiling during the past two off-seasons, as he coped with the various frustrations and limitations that came from playing in the ECAC-Intercollegiate Football Conference.These days, he's grinning from ear to ear just thinking of what lies ahead.The Tigers are about seven weeks away from starting spring practice as they inch toward their first season in the Patriot League and games against higher-profile opponents such as Holy Cross, Pennsylvania and Columbia.

WASHINGTON -- With the armed forces holding less appeal for college-minded teen-agers and with military pilots leaving for lucrative airline jobs, the Pentagon is finding it harder to attract and retain high-quality personnel."

Mark Karcher, St. Frances' 6-foot-5, 215-pound senior swingman, is one of the nation's most sought-after Division I basketball prospects.But could you see him as an equally talented quarterback?Nearly eight years ago, at Collington Square Recreation Center, Karcher was exactly that. He could throw a football better than he could dribble a basketball."I started playing football when I was 7, and I played for four years. I was good," said Karcher, 18."I was bigger than most kids my age. I looked down on everybody.

Terrell Vinson heard lots of opinions during the recruiting process but kept his own counsel. "With recruiting, everybody's got something to say," the St. Frances senior said. "You just try to keep a low profile and think about what's the best thing for yourself." Vinson decided Monday night the best thing for him would be continuing his basketball career at Massachusetts. The 6-foot-7, 205-pound forward committed to UMass coach Derek Kellogg during an in-home visit. Vinson, a Baltimore Sun All-Metro selection who averaged 23 points and eight rebounds as a senior, had committed to Loyola Marymount in the fall before reopening his recruitment after coach Bill Bayno left the school.

Here's part of a Q&A with Jeff Ermann of TurtleSportsReport.com: With the news that Maryland is not a part of Terrence Jennings' top five, have the Terps stopped recruiting the big man? If that's the case, what went wrong here? And what do you make of him leaving Mount Zion for Notre Dame Prep? No, the staff is still actively pursuing, it seems. As to what went wrong here, well, that's a long [story]. Jennings is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a middle-of-the-night when-the-coach-isn't-looking high school transfer.

Tracking the Terps Heather A. Dinich reports on Maryland football. Go to baltimoresun.com/dinich Recruiting report Matt Bracken gives an ACC football recruiting overview. Go to baltimoresun.com/recruiting Ravens Central Mike Preston blogs on the Ravens' offensive line and the perform ance of Steve McNair. Go to baltimoresun.com/ravenscentral Moving the Chains Sheil Kapadia rounds up national press coverage of Michael Vick. Go to baltimoresun.com/movingthechains Picture this View sports photos from the past week.

As Maryland's latest prized recruit was pledging his loyalty to the Terps yesterday afternoon, the message boards and recruiting Web sites were instantly a mixture of celebration and speculation about what - or who - comes next. Maryland coach Gary Williams and his assistants have already landed two top tier players in the past two weeks - St. Frances standout Sean Mosley, who gave an oral commitment yesterday, and five-star recruit Terrence Jennings, a 6-foot-10 power forward from Sacramento, Calif.

After the arrest of a rookie Anne Arundel County police officer accused of photographing himself fondling a teenage girl during a traffic stop, county police officials defended yesterday their recruit training. Officer Joseph F. Mosmiller, 22, and the three officers implicated in the Jan. 20 incident were all members of the same recruiting class last spring, said Lt. David Waltemeyer, a county police spokesman. "The values that we teach our officers and that 99 percent of officers use as a guide don't reflect this type of activity," Waltemeyer said.

Considered by many to be among the country's most elite high school basketball players, 7-foot-1 center Kosta Koufos somehow managed to irritate the very college coaches who have been trying desperately to recruit him. Turns out it was a technical glitch. "I had all these coaches complaining that they were sending me text messages and I couldn't respond to them," said Koufos, a high school junior from Canton, Ohio. At the coaches' behest, he went out and bought a new cell phone at a discounted rate of $100 - one capable of receiving their mini messages.

After struggling to retain some of the top high school players in the state, the University of Maryland went elsewhere to fill its needs, and is expecting at least 21 national-letter-of-intent signatures today. In mid-December, Maryland's recruiting class was ranked No. 19 in the nation by Rivals.com, but has since dropped to No. 29 with the recent change of heart of a highly touted offensive lineman. A top-30 ranking is respectable after back-to-back 5-6 seasons, but recruiting experts agreed the expectations were higher for Maryland during a year in which there was an abundance of talent in the state.

Tip of the week: Recruiting The most important step in recruiting and hiring strong job applicants is to develop a job description that is both comprehensible and concise. You cannot attract the right applicants, or evaluate applicants' resumes effectively, if you do not have a well-defined set of requirements for the job. The well-developed job description is a multipurpose tool needed for every aspect of the employment process, including advertising, interviewing, selection, training, performance appraisals, promotions and more.

WASHINGTON - Once seen as a haven from the jungles of Vietnam or as a source of cash for college, the National Guard is struggling to reinvent itself in the age of terror with a bare-knuckled new ad campaign, hundreds of additional recruiters and a beefed-up financial package for its part-time soldiers. But some active-duty officers and defense analysts doubt that the Guard can quickly turn around its weak recruiting. They say the shortfall could be the first ominous sign of a fraying of the 30-year-old all-volunteer force, both active-duty and reserve, because of the strain of repeat yearlong deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

St. John's College has decided that its student body is, in one respect, a little too much like the authors on the school's vaunted "great books" list. "Almost everyone is white," said Martin A. Dyer, a black alumnus who is part of a new campaign by St. John's to recruit more minorities. There are just three black undergraduates at the 470-student school, and two are the sons of a professor. Overall, 89 percent of the student body is white, a number that has barely changed for the last five years.