ABCDE D HOCKEY
The shortest longest deal The NHL rejects Ilya Kovalchuk’s record 17-year contract with New Jersey a day after it’s signed. D6
TOUR DE FRANCE Big day coming
Top challenger Andy Schleck says today is his one chance to wrest Tour from Alberto Contador. D5
Coaching for the
enemy? Private instruction creates conflict in WCAC football rivalry
by Josh Barr When Zach Dancel, a promising
quarterback, was preparing to start his high school career a few years ago, his father wanted to give him ev- ery possible advantage. Bernie Dan- cel arranged for Zach to receive indi- vidual instruction and offseason training. The best choice for a tutor, though, turned out to be a coach who ran the offense at a rival school. Even though Zach would soon be enrolling at Good Counsel, the Dancels thought the best private instructor was De- Matha offensive coordinator Chris Baucia, who has a blossoming busi- ness called the Quarterback Factory, training many of the region’s top high school players. Baucia worked with Dancel for three years during the offseason, and the passer’s skills improved to the point that he became the Good Coun- sel starter entering last season, his junior year. With Good Counsel and DeMatha fighting it out as the top two teams in the Washington Catho- lic Athletic Conference, the passions surrounding the teams’ games last fall — once during the regular season and again during the WCAC title game — ran deep. While DeMatha Coach Bill McGre-
gor and Good Counsel Coach Bob Milloy played down the situation, Baucia’s relationship with Dancel created angst on both sidelines. The DeMatha coaching staff wondered how much one of their peers had helped an opponent. Their counter- parts at Good Counsel worried that DeMatha might have inside informa- tion about one of the Falcons’ most important players.
Among those who were concerned was Zach’s father, who also happens to be Good Counsel’s running backs coach. “Our coaching staff worried about it, and I had concerns that [Baucia] was going to know some of [Zach’s] weaknesses,” Bernie Dancel said.
Whether those concerns were jus-
tified — and how much Baucia was personally responsible for Zach Dan- cel’s development — is difficult to measure. But after Dancel passed for 186 yards and one touchdown in Good Counsel’s 14-7 victory in the WCAC championship game — a win that ended a five-year title-game los- ing streak to the Stags and propelled Good Counsel to The Washington Post’s No. 1 ranking at season’s end — things reached a boiling point at De- Matha. DeMatha’s offensive line coach, Tim Breslin, quit — and the school’s
coaches continued on D6
Manager Jim Riggleman pulls Nationals rookie Stephen Strasburg from the game in the sixth inning at Cincinnati. Strasburg still won his third consecutive start.
SPORTS “
thursday, july 22, 2010 BLOGS, MULTIMEDIA AND CHATS
washingtonpost.com/sports
First Things First Today, 9:30 a.m. Tracee Hamilton takes your questions on the day’s hot sports topics. D.C. Sports BogDan Steinberg keeps you posted on the serious, the silly and all teams local. Nationals Journal Break down Stephen Strasburg’s start and get ready for the trip to Milwaukee.
SOCCER
United breaks through D.C.’s dormant offense awakens early in a 2-0 win over lower-tier Harrisburg in the U.S. Open Cup. D3
He was like, ‘You know what, we should go shoot.’ And I said, ‘I don’t mind, let’s go.’ ” Wizards rookie Hamady N’Diaye on his first meeting with John Wall. D2
Auto classifieds D5
S
PHOTOS BY JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST Nationals second baseman Cristian Guzmán is greeted by Iván Rodríguez after hitting a two-run home run in the fifth inning. It was Guzmán’s second homer this season. Offense pitches in for Strasburg
Though Nats phenom allows three runs, he takes 8-5 victory
by Adam Kilgore
cincinnati — The performance Ste- phen Strasburg summoned Wednesday night did not rank among his best, which says less about his performance Wednes- day night than about his best. He hung a couple of curveballs the Cincinnati Reds didn’t miss. He allowed three earned runs, matching his season high. The top button on his jersey kept coming undone. He also struck out seven batters, made the Reds swing and miss nine times and sent one batter collapsing to the ground with a curveball that nearly broke over the plate. As Strasburg mixed typical dominance
with rare normalcy, the Washington Na- tionals’ offense, rather than serving as an impediment to a win, helped make one easy for their ace in an 8-5 victory at Great American Ball Park. Before 40,201 — including Pete Rose, who sat right be- hind home plate — Strasburg exited with two outs in the sixth after allowing three earned runs on seven hits and a walk with seven strikeouts. The Nationals’ offense, which limped into Cincinnati following consecutive shutouts in Florida, broke out with eight runs on nine hits, including home runs
Tracking Strasburg vs. Reds W 52⁄3
Season 5-2 541⁄3 Strikes-Pitches
1 IIIIIIIIIIIIIII 8-15
2 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 11-16 3 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 13-17 4 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 10-16 5 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 9-16
6 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 12-17 63-97 (64.9%)
K
KK K K
KK 11.1/9 inn.
Analyze Strasburg’s season with our pitch tracker at
washingtonpost.com/nationals.
by Willie Harris and Cristian Guzmán. The Nationals scored four times in the fourth on two-RBI singles by Ian Des- mond and Nyjer Morgan. Guzmán hit his second homer this season, a two-run blast to right off Reds starter Bronson Ar- royo that gave the Nationals the lead for good in the fifth. In the middle of the sixth inning, 97 pitches into Strasburg’s start, after two more Reds had raced around the bases, Manager Jim Riggleman asked for the ball, Adam Dunn slapped him on the back and Strasburg trudged into the dug- out. He high-fived teammates and shared an animated chat with pitching coach
nationals continued on D3
Dec. IP H ER BB SO ERA 73 1 7
4.76
43 14 15 75 2.32 SOs
First place looks good to Mystics
Washington is tied with Indiana for East’s top spot after 82-72 win over Dream
by Jorge Castillo JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST
Chasity Melvin, left, Atlanta’s Armintie Price, center, and Crystal Langhorne, right, vie for a rebound. Langhorne’s 15 rebounds were one off her season high.
Coming off consecutive losses to the Eastern Conference’s two worst teams, the Washington Mystics were searching for their first post-all-star-break win in the midst of a tight Eastern Conference playoff race. Maybe a few thousand screaming chil- dren were what they needed. Playing an 11:30 a.m. matinee in front of an announced crowd of 14,347 at Veri- zon Center — many of whom were chil- dren from local summer camps for the team’s annual Camp Day — the Mystics (13-7) turned to Crystal Langhorne and
the bench to snap a two-game losing streak with a 82-72 win over the Atlanta Dream (14-9) on Wednesday. With the victory, Washington im- proved to 8-2 at Verizon Center and sits in a first-place tie with Indiana in the highly-competitive and fluid East stand- ings — three days after a loss against Chi- cago dropped the Mystics to third. This is the latest in a season that Wash-
ington has been in first place since July 30, 2002, when it was in a tie atop the East with New York at 15-10. It might not last too long, though. The Fever host Los Angeles on Thursday before coming to the District to play the Mystics on Satur- day night. “This is when we have to start playing our best basketball,” Coach Julie Plank said. “I talked to our team about that. We never get too high on wins and never get too low on losses. It’s good to get back in the winning column.”
Washington first took the lead — in the
game’s only lead change — less than three minutes in and never looked back, stretching the lead to 56-37 with 3 min- utes 20 seconds remaining in the third quarter. The Dream made it somewhat tighter in the fourth quarter, going on a 7-0 run to begin the period to cut the lead to sev- en. But that was as close as it got. Langhorne led all scorers with 24 points on 10-of-15 shooting, most of which came around the basket on put- backs or crafty spin moves in the lane with a few 18-foot jumpers sprinkled in. The 15 rebounds were one off her sea-
son high. “I’m trying to establish myself every
game,” said Langhorne, the WNBA East- ern Conference player of the month for June. “I was getting in good places and I
mystics continued on D5
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74