Soccer Player

A local donor advocacy group is hoping a handsome soccer star will convince Latinos to donate their organs. Donate Life Maryland is bringing DC United soccer player Andy Najar to Baltimore this weekend to speak about the need for Latinos to donate organs, tissue and corneas. More than 20,000 Latinos living in the U.S. are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, according to Donate Life Maryland.  About 18 Americans of all ethnicities die each day due to lack of organ donors.

Henry F. Long Jr., a boys soccer coach and state champion who owned a window-cleaning business, died of cancer Tuesday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Perry Hall resident was 54. Born in Baltimore and raised in Sparrows Point's North Point Village, he began playing sports at Battle Grove Elementary School. He was a 1976 graduate of Sparrows Point High School, where he wrestled and was a three-time state champion in soccer. He attended Essex Community College and earned a bachelor's degree in sports management at West Virginia University, where he was captain of the men's soccer team.

As the World Cup games roll on in Germany, many soccer fans have noticed more than the deft ball control, precise playmaking and flurries of yellow cards: With lust or envy, they have registered the physiques of the men on the pitch. Pound for pound, professional soccer players are among the fittest team athletes in the world. In the course of a 90-minute game, they will cover as much as six miles, depending on the position they play. They spend 70 percent to 80 percent of the time running, often at a full sprint, while jumping, spinning, pivoting and kicking with pinpoint accuracy.

All athletes dream of reaching the big leagues, of playing under the lights in front of thousands of screaming fans. Skyy Anderson, 23, lived that dream. But then it was all taken from her. After a four-year career at Maryland, Anderson was offered a chance to try out for the Philadelphia Independence. But after leaving school and leaving everything behind to pursue that opportunity, the Women's Professional Soccer league collapsed, leaving Anderson with nowhere to go. "I was like, 'I took this year off and now I'm just sitting at home,'" Anderson said.

Adam Matthew Parr, an honors student and varsity soccer player at Sparrows Point High School, died Wednesday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, less than 12 hours after a car in which he was riding collided with a tractor-trailer. He was 17. Born and raised in Edgemere. he attended Deep Creek Elementary in Essex and then Chesapeake Terrace Elementary, Sparrows Point Middle and Sparrows Point High in Edgemere. With only three or four credits left to earn for his high school diploma, he had enrolled at the Community College of Baltimore County.

IT'S NOT every day that a former professional athlete coaches sports clinics for a local recreation council, but that's what Ray Vigliotti is doing in Taneytown this month.Vigliotti is directing Taneytown Soccer Camps at Northwest Middle School. The camps began this week and will run through June 27, registration permitting.Vigliotti has lived in Taneytown less than a year, but he is bringing his passion for the sport to northwest Carroll. In addition to directing the sports camps, he plays on the Taneytown men's soccer team.

CAL RIPKEN JR.'S stirring consecutive games record last year? Makes us salivate for Opening Day. Magic Johnson's comeback from his HIV-related retirement? Inspirational. But it was another local sports story this winter that for us exemplified the meaning of sports heroism.Hamisi Amani-Dove, a 22-year-old soccer player from Columbia, played in the U.S. Olympic Festival in Denver last summer. As reported in a story by Laura Barnhardt in The Sun for Howard recently, Mr. Amani-Dove was coming off the field, fresh from receiving a bronze medal for his team's effort.

Former U.S. National Soccer Team player Desmond Armstrong traveled the globe playing against and with some of the world's best players. Last week, he showed 100 local youngsters what some of his opponents would love to see -- tricks behind some of his best moves.The 30-year-old athlete gave a weeklong soccer clinic for the youngsters at Volleyball House Inc. on Gateway Drive in Columbia. The boys and girls, ages 7 to 14, paid $100 for the camp. Some who have played for a long time want to become professional players, while others just registered to learn something new.Mr.

A frightening incident during a girls soccer game Wednesday at Mercy High led officials to invoke a little-used rule: suspending the game because the atmosphere was not proper to continue.Catholic High soccer player Maria Llusrio collapsed about 17 minutes into the second half. It was believed she had stopped breathing, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation was administered by a game official. Doctors later said that she had not stopped breathing, and Llusrio was cleared to play again after staying overnight in a hospital.

A popular Wilde Lake High School varsity soccer player is in serious condition after crashing his Honda Civic on Friday less than a mile from school. Marco Filipponi, 18, of the 4700 block of Rams Horn Row in Ellicott City, was speeding east on Governor Warfield Parkway near Windstream Drive about 10:30 a.m. when he lost control, slid onto the median and began to spin, police said. His car then struck the rear of a vehicle that was waiting on Windstream Drive, according to police. Filipponi was traveling to a work-study assignment.

Annapolis resident Mike Greenhill is one of those rare guys who, even after he turned 50, could effortlessly sprint up and down a soccer field like he did as a much younger man. Until one evening last year, the 53-year-old took this ability for granted. Now, as Greenhill prepares to return to the game after an 11-month hiatus, he's happy to be alive. For this, he thanks a young woman whom he calls "his angel. " Last April Stephanie Andrews, a 22-year-old Howard County firefighter and emergency medical technician from Sykesville, agreed to play a soccer game on her friends' co-ed team because it was short a few players.

McDonogh junior midfielder George Campbell, an All-Metro first-team selection, has been named the 2012-13 Gatorade Maryland Boys Soccer Player of the Year.  In his third varsity season, Campbell finished with six goals and nine assists as the playmaking catalyst for the Eagles. Campbell becomes the fifth McDonogh standout to win the award, joining Jon Cole (1998-99), Mike Marchiano (2004-05), Chris Agorsor (2007-08) and Marquez Fernandez (twice in 2008-09 and 2009-10). Agorsor went on to to be named the Gatorade National Player of the Year.  Campbell is still weighing his college options and has narrowed his choices to North Carolina, Maryland, Wake Forest, Louisville and Duke.

Michael DeGraffenreidt Loyola, defender, senior With the ability to completely take over the game, DeGraffenreidt entrenched himself this season as one of the top players in the nation. DeGraffenreidt anchored the Dons' defense to the second best goals-against average in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference and led the team to two shutouts in the playoffs en route to its first league championship since 2005. "Michael DeGraffenreidt is perhaps the best defensive player in high school soccer in the country," Dons coach Lee Tschantret said.

Kacie Longo South River, forward, junior Down a goal late in the Class 4A state title game against four-time defending champion Bethesda-Chevy Chase, it was no surprise that Longo provided the tying goal for South River. All season and particularly in the team's impressive playoff run, the junior forward provided the important goals. This time, her 29th goal of the season tied the score at 1 with 7:50 to play, and the No. 4 Seahawks (18-2) went on to win in penalty kicks to claim the program's third title and first since 1997.

South River junior forward Kacie Longo consistently scored goals in the regular season, contributing at least one in all but two of the team's 14 games. In the Class 4A playoffs, where the No. 4 Seahawks (17-2) meet four-time defending champion Bethesda-Chevy Chase for the championship Friday night at UMBC, however, Longo has been on fire. She scored four goals against North Point in a 7-2 victory in the 4A East regional semifinal. When the Seahawks trailed No. 6 Arundel, 2-0, in the regional championship, she tied the game with two scores in the second half and the team advanced with a 3-2 overtime win. In the state semifinal round, she poured in three more as the Seahawks beat Bowie, 4-0. It all adds up to 27 goals this season for Longo, who also has six assists.

When asked to pick a favorite moment in his four-year career at Marriotts Ridge, senior Brad Martinelli went all the way back to when he scored his first goal in the first game of his freshman year. Since then, the All-Metro first-team midfielder has been part of plenty more memorable times. The No. 4 Mustangs (11-0) have won three straight state championships and are looking to become the third school in Howard County to win four in a row. Wilde Lake and River Hill have accomplished the feat.

Ravens kicker Rhys Lloyd's journey to an NFL career began with a ripped-up knee and a cracked wall. The knee belonged to Lloyd's father, Bryn, a soccer player who toiled in relative anonymity in England's lower professional leagues until the injury forced him to bring his family to a faraway place called Minnesota to start a second career as a coach. The cracked wall was the result of Bryn's son taking his turn at kicking an American football during a high school trip to Disney's Wide World of Sports complex in Florida.

The school report Laurie Schwoy handed in way back in the second grade came with a picture and a dream. "It said how I wanted to grow up to be a professional women's soccer player and there's a little drawing of me wearing a uniform," she said. "My teacher wrote on it: `I hope this happens one day and if anyone can do it, I'm sure you can.' Who would have thought?" From McDonogh School to Philadelphia, Schwoy, 23, is making her mark in the new Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) with a Philadelphia Charge uniform on. Still trying to overcome persistent hamstring problems that limited her career at the University of North Carolina, the offensive-minded midfielder is doing all she can to help lead the Charge (5-2-2)

Old Mill senior Alli Cislo has never craved extra attention, but what she does on the soccer field leaves no choice. Opposing coaches spend hours planning to stop the All-Metro first-team forward. During school on the day of a game, her classmates routinely tell her they're expecting nothing less than a goal or two. The attention increases at game time, starting with the two defenders who are often assigned to mark her. And then Cislo gets the ball. The opposing coach cringes.