Senior Year

High school seniors like me, who are looking to go to college this fall, are preparing for our moment of truth: The pile of college applications on my desk is toppling over and the February deadlines are days away. How did it come to this? When I entered my high school's double doors on the first day of my senior year in August, I was excited and had much to look forward to - or so I thought. I was one of the oldest and therefore coolest kids in the building. Soon I'd be running onto the field during the pep rally, getting ready for prom, taking graduation pictures - it was going to be a great year.

Fallston senior Madison Brown, center, recently signed a letter of intent to swim at Manhattan College. Brown has been swimming for 15 years, first for Loyola Blakefield Aquatics and Coach Keith Schertle and then for the Fallston High School varsity team for the past four years. In her freshman year, she won a state championship and followed it with two championships her sophomore year and one her senior year. She plans on majoring in marketing and global business at Manhattan.

"It's official. With the final payment on the cap and gown, we haven't any money left."My friend shared this information with a note of awe in her voice.Easing her toward the living room, I murmured words of sympathy."Stop that!" she cried. "You don't have a clue what awaits you. Your child isn't a. " She choked on the word "senior.""First, it's senior pictures. Photos so poor you question the DNA evidence that this could be your child. Then it's SATs -- payment for the privilege of proving your child's career goals are best suited for refilling a Slurpee machine."

Daxter Miles wasn't planning on making his college commitment Friday night. But the Dunbar senior had a sudden change of heart during his high school graduation three days ago. “I decided [to end my recruitment] because it was a big event in my life, with me and my family, so why not keep it going and commit on my graduation?” said Miles, who pledged to West Virginia. “I wasn't planning to at first. Everything hit me though, and I thought about it real heavy.” Miles, who also considered offers from Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Villanova and Xavier, said the Mountaineers have been recruiting him since the beginning of his senior year, shortly after he transferred to Dunbar from IMG Academy in Florida.

Daxter Miles wasn't planning on making his college commitment Friday night. But the Dunbar senior had a sudden change of heart during his high school graduation three days ago. “I decided [to end my recruitment] because it was a big event in my life, with me and my family, so why not keep it going and commit on my graduation?” said Miles, who pledged to West Virginia. “I wasn't planning to at first. Everything hit me though, and I thought about it real heavy.” Miles, who also considered offers from Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Villanova and Xavier, said the Mountaineers have been recruiting him since the beginning of his senior year, shortly after he transferred to Dunbar from IMG Academy in Florida.

Brad Fordyce believes a player's senior year should be his best one.A two-way starter in football, he backed this thinking with action in helping C. Milton Wright to its third straight unbeaten regular season.In the process, his work earned him the honor of The Baltimore Sun's Harford County Football Player of the Year.That work included leading the county in tackles and finishing among the leaders in pass receiving. For 10 games, the 6-foot, 185-pound player had 203 defensive hits, including 103 solo tackles, and caught 16 passes for a county-high 393 yards and four touchdowns.

One way or another, Ben Whitacre was determined to get his kicks in college. In either style of football, the European kind Americans call soccer or on the gridiron, Whitacre was passionately devoted to the goal of playing a Division I sport. Early on in his high school career, soccer appeared the favorite. Slightly built physically, he had the aim to join the midfield at the University of Virginia - and that did not mean the 50-yard line. But times changed when he began performing for the more publicized Sherando (Va.)

Fallston senior Madison Brown, center, recently signed a letter of intent to swim at Manhattan College. Brown has been swimming for 15 years, first for Loyola Blakefield Aquatics and Coach Keith Schertle and then for the Fallston High School varsity team for the past four years. In her freshman year, she won a state championship and followed it with two championships her sophomore year and one her senior year. She plans on majoring in marketing and global business at Manhattan.

Westminster wrestling coach Solomon Carr still remembers returning home after competing in his first official wrestling tournament.He was in the second grade at the time and ended up going against a cousin who was in the fourth grade.He said he got "crushed," and when he got home, all of his brothers and sisters made him do extra chores for losing."I wanted to get out of wrestling then and there. They gave me no slack at all," Carr said.He did, but only until the fifth grade. When you're a Carr brother in Erie, Pa., it's almost a given you are going to wrestle and wrestle well.

I SENT A KID off to college this week. As the car carrying him and his mother rolled down the alley, I had conflicting emotions. Part of me said "It's about time." Another part of me wondered "Where did the time go?" My mind flashed back to a morning 13 years ago when I had walked the kid down the same alley to begin his educational career in the kindergarten of MountRoyal Elementary. As a kindergartner he had carried an empty Roi-Tan cigar box to hold his pencils, a gift from his dad. Now as a freshman at Boston University he was heading north with a car full of clothes and an empty Upmann cigar box, another gift, that the kid would probably use to hold headphones.

One day after the Maryland women earned the No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, the Terps made a clean sweep of the major Atlantic Coast Conference awards. Katie Schwarzmann and Iliana Sanza repeated as the Offensive Player of the Year and the Defensive Player of the Year, respectively. Taylor Cummings was the Freshman of the Year and Cathy Reese earned Coach of the Year honors for a record sixth time, when the ACC individual awards were announced Monday. All four are Baltimore-area natives and former All-Metro players.

Men's college basketball City alum Fair will stay at Syracuse to play senior year Junior men's basketball forward C.J. Fair (City) announced his intention Wednesday to return to Syracuse for his senior season. The All-Big East Conference second-team player considered entering his name in the NBA draft but decided to return to the Orange for his fourth year of eligibility and to complete his degree work. "After talking it over with my family and my coaches, I decided another year at Syracuse was best for me," he said.

BANGKOK -- Most of us can read about sex trafficking with a sense of detachment. It is only when we see its results up close that we are forced to confront the full extent of its horror. Nana Plaza is one of several "red light" districts in Bangkok. It is less than two blocks from my upscale hotel, but worlds away from it, a distance, you could say, separating Heaven from Hell. Girls -- and that's what many of them are -- wear almost nothing. They are there to please. My guide points out a three-story structure.

Aquille Carr, The Baltimore Sun's All-Metro Player of the Year in boys basketball the last two seasons, will not play in Baltimore as a senior. Carr's tangled path through youth stardom will continue at Arlington Country Day School, a private basketball power in Jacksonville, Fla., said the school's coach, Rex Morgan. Morgan, a former Boston Celtics player, said Carr enrolled at Arlington Country Day on Wednesday and would begin classes Thursday morning. Asked if he was excited to work with the high-flying guard, Morgan said: "Oh yeah.

Fourteen years ago on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, Mich., an 8-year old boy learned to be a football player. In the blistering heat of summer, the boy climbed and descended the concrete steps of Eastern Michigan's Rynearson Stadium, past empty bleachers as sweat dripped down his face. After, he would run route after route on the field, sprinting and chasing his older brother. As the young running back worked, his father watched, giving instruction. For years, through high school, the boy, Travis Davidson, would run those steps and those routes, never fully grasping why his father had him do this.

I find it incredible that Joe Seivold, touted by Sports Illustrated magazine in 1958 as "possibly the greatest lacrosse player to ever play the game," was not included in your list of the 175 top Maryland athletes ("The top 175," May 17). Seivold began his illustrious career in lacrosse at Friends School, where he was selected All-Maryland at midfield in 1953 and 1954. In 1954, during his senior year at Friends, he was a member of the Maryland Scholastic Association Championship Team.

At the conclusion of the awards ceremony for the senior class, I congratulated the father of the young man named scholar-athlete for his son's successful high school career both on the field and in the classroom "Thank you, but we still have to get through Beach Week," he said. Only the parent of another high school senior would understand that he was not making a joke or deflecting a compliment. Like a tiny electric shock, understanding passed between us. Understanding and trepidation.

The Maryland Higher Education Commission will begin examining today a proposal to turn a Rockville trade school into a college.Although the college would offer the equivalent of a junior and senior year at a four-year institution, some officials have cited concerns about standards, student diversity, existing competition and prudence in light of the state of the economy.

Jazz Napravnik didn't even wait for her sister, Rosie, to get across the finish line. She saw the way the jockey was riding Believe You Can in the Kentucky Oaks, saw the horse stretch its legs down the final hundred yards under guidance from a nearly motionless rider, and she knew. "I just left my box, ran toward the winner's circle," Jazz Napravnik said. With her win in Kentucky, Rosie Napravnik, 24, pushed her name even further into the discussion of the country's top jockeys.

Loyola men's basketball Jones, Laster, Tuohy join 2012-13 class Loyola coach Jimmy Patsos announced the addition of three players to the Greyhounds' 2012-13 freshman class: Jarred Jones (John Carroll), Eric Laster and Sean Tuohy Jr. , whose adoptive older brother is Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher . "We're excited to have Jarred, Eric and S.J. join our program," Patsos said. "With Jarred, we are bringing in another player who knows what it takes to be successful in the Baltimore Catholic League, one of the top high school conferences around, and Eric certainly had a terrific senior year in Delaware.