Top basketball recruit Spurlock still likes UVa
New Cavaliers coach Tony Bennett convinced Tristan Spurlock that he should not move on.
By Doug Doughty
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Tristan Spurlock will always have the distinction of making his college choice before he knew where he would spend his senior year in high school.

Then, once he had spent the 2008-09 basketball season at Word of Life Academy in Springfield, Spurlock had to revisit his college choice.

Spurlock signed a letter-of-intent with Virginia in the fall but could have gotten a release from the Cavaliers after former coach Dave Leitao was replaced by Tony Bennett.

"When you're left in the middle of nowhere like that, anything can happen," said Spurlock, a 6-foot-8, 220-pounder. "I had a lot of people telling me to decommit, but I didn't want to make any hasty decisions. I wanted to know who the coach would be before I made any big change like that."

One day after he was introduced as Virginia coach April 1, Bennett travelled to Woodbridge to visit with Spurlock.

"That was huge for me," Spurlock said. "It meant a lot to my family and showed what a priority I was for the new staff."

Spurlock is The Roanoke Times' choice as Mr. Basketball in Virginia, a title for which he would not have been eligible one year earlier, when he played at Montrose Christian in Rockville, Md.

Spurlock ranks behind Oak Hill post player Keith "Tiny" Gallon on an accompanying list of the top prospects in Virginia, but Gallon does not qualify for Mr. Basketball because his family's home is in Houston.

Spurlock left Montrose so he could play closer. He wasn't eager to return to Woodbridge High School, where he had played as a freshman.

Time was running short before Spurlock settled on Word of Life, where the student body numbers 80.

"That was a blessing in disguise," he said. "It's probably been my best year of basketball, school and being close to my family. There was no drama. It was great. I loved it.

"There were no givens. Anything could have happened. Basketball-wise, I took a hit in terms of my rankings. People didn't know if I was scared of the competition or because me and [Montrose] coach [Stu] Vetter didn't get along or because I was uncoachable.

"I just wanted to be close to home. I made that drive -- an hour and 45 minutes, with traffic -- every morning and every night. After you get done with that, you're like, 'Man, I want something else.' "

Spurlock would rather be spending his time on the court. He works out from 5-7 a.m. almost daily and carefully monitors what he eats. His mother, Tina, is a nutritionist. Father Rodney handles the workouts and was once an NFL agent, according to Tristan.

Bennett hasn't watched much film of Virginia's 11 returning scholarship players and even less of the newcomers, Spurlock and Jontel Evans, a point guard from Bethel High School in Hampton.

"We had our elite camp, and they both participated," Bennett said. "They didn't do everything. I used them to demonstrate some of the stuff. What I saw was what I had heard about Jontel being strong and explosive and taking pride in guarding the ball.

"Tristan can play multiple positions and certainly has some skills offensively. He scores in a variety of ways. I've seen him knock down shots and put them on the floor. Good size. Good athleticism. He's charismatic, too."

Bennett arrived with UVa already at the NCAA scholarship limit, provided he held onto Spurlock and Evans.

"When I got the job, I basically had to get to know them," Bennett said. "Introduce myself and say, 'This is who I am. This is what we're going to try and be about. I know you guys will have options.' I didn't want to twist their arms.

"Not saying that they couldn't have opened it up and had a bunch of options -- that always happens in the spring -- but they were already sold on the University of Virginia from a non-basketball standpoint. They just had to meet us."

With all of the slots filled for 2009-10, Bennett turned his attention to the 2010-11 class and last month he took a commitment from frontcourt player, 6-8 Will Regan from the Nichols School in Buffalo, N.Y.

"Whatever the situation is when you take over, that's what it is," Bennett said. "You try to make the best of it. Getting the job in April, there might have been an opportunity to add a player for 2009, but I think it was good to be able to say, 'Let's go attack the 2010s and get busy on that.'"
 

Thomas Dale’s Bates named boys soccer player of year
By Michael Phillips
Published: July 3, 2009

In the event that Will Bates does not become an international soccer star, he's working on a backup plan -- world-famous rapper.

That might be a slight exaggeration. Don't look for Willie the Squid and Project Trojans to be on MTV anytime soon, but Bates' soccer skills are the real deal.

The Thomas Dale forward can add Times-Dispatch player of the year to a list of honors that includes Central Region player of the year and Gatorade state player of the year. He's a member of the USA junior national team and has an eye on the 2012 Olympics.

This season he scored 19 goals and added 13 assists for the Knights, who were eliminated from the region tournament in a game Bates couldn't attend because of national team obligations.

That tournament took the team to Portugal, where they played one of the top-ranked youth teams in the world, the Germans, to a 0-0 draw.

"You never know, but I think the group we have coming up is pretty good," Bates said. "So far we have a 4-1-1 record overseas, and we've played two of the top teams in the world."

He'll get a rematch against the Germans at the end of this month, when he heads to Northern Ireland for the Milk Cup -- one of the top soccer tournaments for youth teams.

Next year Bates might attend the University of Virginia to play soccer, where he would reunite with another top player from Richmond, Brian Ownby of Deep Run. He might also head to Europe to hone his skills against the world's best players.

"Soccer is on a higher level over there for sure," he said. "We're improving, but we're still not on the level that they are."

Traveling with the national team has also given him the opportunity to build camaraderie with players who will form the core of US soccer in the future. The next Olympics are in 2012, an event open to players under 23 years old. Bates will be right under the cutoff at that time.

Of course, it will be hard for him to replicate the team atmosphere he had with the Knights, players he'd been around since he was young. During off days they'd hang out at his house, playing ping-pong and video-game soccer -- that is, when they weren't working on their burgeoning rap careers. (Album title: "Too Hood to be Good.")

"It's just good to have your team around you," he said. "Sometimes we'd have fun, and sometimes we'd get down to work."

These days Bates is having fun getting down to work, and he hopes it pays off in the coming years on the soccer field.
 

Brathwaite makes commitment to UVa
By The Daily Progress Staff
Published: July 5, 2009

Virginia picked up its 9th verbal commitment of the class of 2010 on Friday night when outside linebacker Chris Brathwaite made his pledge to coach Al Groh’s program.

The 6-foot-1, 257-pound Brathwaite chose the Cavaliers over offers from Hampton and Fordham. He also had interest from Penn State, Rutgers and Syracuse.

Brathwaite had 36 solo tackles and four sacks as a junior at Holy Cross High in Flushing, N.Y. The school also produced former UVa standout wide receiver Kevin Ogletree, now a rookie with the Dallas Cowboys, and Cavaliers men’s basketball star Sylven Landesberg, the 2009 ACC rookie of the year. He plays defensive tackle and offensive guard for the Knights. He earned honorable mention all-Queens honors on the defensive line as a junior.

Brathwaite is the fourth player to commit to UVa this week, joining cornerback Pablo Alvarez, linebacker Henry Coley and offensive lineman Conner Davis.
 

N.Y. linebacker commits to Virginia, the Cavs' fifth commitment of the week
Football University of Virginia By NORM WOOD
7:07 PM EDT, July 4, 2009

A hot football recruiting week for the University of Virginia continued with a commitment from Chris Braithwaite, a New York native.

Braithwaite, a 6-foot-1, 250-pound prospect from Holy Cross High in Flushing, N.Y., received his first scholarship offer from U.Va. He plays defensive end but might project as a linebacker in college.

He attends the same high school from which U.Va. men's basketball guard Sylven Landesberg, who was last season's Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year, and former U.Va. wide receiver Kevin Ogletree graduated.

Braithwaite is the fifth U.Va. commitment for the 2010 class this week and the ninth overall for the Cavaliers. Feb. 3 will be the first day recruits can sign a letter of intent.

Operation Hardwood coaches marvel at soldiers' resolve and morale
David Teel
June 28, 2009

Saluting a Marine's coffin. Meeting a quadruple amputee. Honoring friends lost on 9/11 .

No basketball game — no championship, buzzer-beater or high-wire dunk — approaches the searing memories college coaches have after recent goodwill visits with U.S. military personnel stateside and in Afghanistan.

"You see things that just absolutely break you down," said Dave Odom, a former coach at Wake Forest and South Carolina.

"It was one of the best experiences of my life," said former Boston University coach Dennis Wolff.

"My admiration has grown the more I've been able to witness," American University's Jeff Jones said.

Jones, Odom and Wolff were among seven coaches who earlier this month gathered in Washington, huddled with wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center and then traveled to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Manhattan's Barry Rohrssen, UC Davis' Gary Stewart and former coaches Pete Gillen of Virginia and Reggie Minton of Air Force also joined the group. The junket was part of Operation Hardwood, a USO-sponsored project that has sent coaches overseas the past five years.

Notice the U.Va. connections, starting with Gillen. Jones preceded him as Virginia's coach and also quarterbacked the Cavaliers' 1981 Final Four squad; Odom and Wolff served as Virginia assistants under Terry Holland and Jones, respectively.

Had recently terminated Dave Leitao been with them, Jones joked during the tour, "the Virginia people would have the Taliban after us."

Given the troops' grave missions and 'round-the-clock duties, Jones and his colleagues vowed to keep the mood light during their journey June 9-16.

They reveled in stories from their civilian tour guide, a former roadie for Led Zeppelin, Little Feat and the Yardbirds named Brian Condliffe. They organized shooting contests, signed autographs and distributed T-shirts donated by their respective schools, Virginia included. Jones drove a $700,000 MRAP armored vehicle.

Gillen, ever a New York wise guy, spouted non-stop one-liners, often at his own expense — finding a helmet to fit his oversized noggin proved challenging. Gillen's thought that flares fired near a helicopter in which he was riding were missiles provided more comic relief.

"We teased him that by the time he got home he'd be telling people that he snatched a missile in mid-air and saved a general's life," Jones said.

The coaches spent time at Bagram and compounds in Kabul and Kandahar. They described the landscape as primal, the weather oppressive, and the accommodations better-than-expected — Internet, cable television and Friday surf-and-turf!

Regardless of venue or conditions, the coaches marveled at morale.

"There is no doubt in the minds of our servicemen and women, and I emphasize women because they are just as committed, that we're headed in the right direction over there," Odom said. "I'm a lifer as a coach, and I've always felt that the best team-builders in the world were coaches. But I found out several years ago that we're not. The military is."

Odom grew up in Goldsboro, N.C., home to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. His father was a master sergeant during World War I and served as a chauffeur for the celebrated general John J. Pershing.

But no military ties could prepare the coaches for the trip's more sobering and enlightening moments.

Most challenging, the daily routine:

Knowing the enemy always lurks in the hills. Trudging two blocks from barracks to the latrine. Wearing 40 pounds of body armor while airborne in Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.

Most indelible, the personal stories of our military heroes:

The broken bodies but boundless spirits at Walter Reed and the Naval hospital, particularly a young man who lost all four limbs and another who's endured more than 120 surgeries. A Green Beret who planned to celebrate his upcoming 40th birthday by running 50 miles around the base perimeter.

"We met so many absolutely terrific people," Jones said. "If anybody in the world has a right to complain, you would think it would be some of those guys at (the hospitals). But we never heard that.

"I don't ever want to hear how tough our guys have it, getting up for an 8 o'clock class or studying for exams. (The soldiers) have a hard-ass life."

Jones, Wolff and Odom agreed the most solemn experience was participating in a Fallen Comrade Ceremony as Bagram said farewell to a Marine casualty. The ritual began with hundreds of troops from myriad nations forming two columns on the tarmac and awaiting the hearse.

No one, coaches included, spoke or flinched as uniformed pallbearers carried the coffin between the columns and loaded it onto a plane for the flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. As the jet's doors closed, a bugler played Taps.

Chills and tears were unavoidable.

"It's a reminder that this is for real," Jones said.

Last year, Jones traveled to Iraq with Operation Hardwood; Odom had been to Iraq and Kuwait. But this was Wolff's first such venture, and it became intensely personal when an F-15 pilot at Bagram invited him to scrawl a message on one of the plane's bombs.

Wolff knew three people who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks, two inside the World Trade Center and one aboard a plane hijackers crashed into the structure. All he could think to do was etch their names onto the payload.

While writing, Wolff recalled a slogan painted on a Jersey wall at Bagram: "9-11. We're still pissed."

"Regardless of your politics," Wolff said, "to see up close the sacrifices (the troops) have to make in their daily lives, and how they handle it, is amazing."

The coaches were like celebrities to the troops. Personnel from McEntire Air National Guard Station and Shaw Air Force Base, both in South Carolina, bonded with Odom; Jimmy Johnson, a soldier from Portsmouth and a Virginia fan, recognized Jones.

"It was embarrassing, some of the soldiers thanking us for coming over," Jones said.

"We told them, 'We're here to thank you. It's the least we can do.' "

Jones, Wolff and Odom never saw the enemy, came under fire or feared for their safety.

But four days after the coaches departed, as each enjoyed resort getaways with family, a pre-dawn Taliban rocket attack killed two U.S. soldiers inside Bagram.

Yet another reminder: This is for real.