By Keith Mills

The big man stood in the corner of the practice field at McDaniel College with a hat, not a helmet, on his head and flip-flops, not cleats, on his feet. He was joined by three other former members of the Ravens who gathered for the first day of training camp with the future Hall of Famer not on the field but on the sidelines.

Jonathan Ogden has missed the start of training camp before, but this was the first time the Ravens took the field without him on the roster.

"Do you miss it?"

"Not this," Ogden laughed. "Talk to me on Sept. 7."

That's when the Ravens open their season at M&T Bank Stadium against the Cincinnati Bengals. Until then, Ogden will be a welcome guest at training camp along with former offensive linemen Mike Flynn, Spencer Folau and Wally Williams, who formed an imposing quartet while watching the team's first full-squad practice.

Ogden will also continue to support local high school football through the Jonathan Ogden Foundation. Since joining the Ravens in 1996, Ogden has helped send hundreds of local student athletes to college, the most from Patterson High School in East Baltimore, where Ogden formed a partnership almost 10 years ago that has made a huge difference in the lives of the players and their families.

"I was looking for a place where I could do the most good, and they were a school that hit the criteria of what I was looking for," Ogden said. "If you're going to get, you have got to give. That's just the way I've always felt."

Ogden went to St. Alban's Schools in Washington, D.C., where he was named the area's Player of the Year in football by USA Today as a senior in 1991. After an All-American career at UCLA, he joined the Ravens and immediately began supporting local high school football.

At Patterson, Ogden worked with former coach Roger Wrenn to create the Play It Smart Program and hire Kelley Bagdarsarian, who was named the school's academic coach for football in 2000. The results have been staggering. In eight years, 98 percent of Patterson football players have graduated and 84 percent have gone on to college or technical schools. The team's overall grade point average has risen 17 percent while Clippers players have logged more than 1,800 hours of community service.

Ogden also donated $100,000 for the renovation of Utz Twardowicz Field at Patterson Park, and helped buy new uniforms and equipment for every Baltimore City Public School football program. He has also invited 150 area high school players to Ravens games as his guests the last nine years.

"After years in the NFL, you sometimes forget that you were 17," Ogden said. "But I remember when I was their age and how I looked up to Redskins players. There was definitely a 'wow' factor there. I met Darrell Green at a young age and he made an impression. That's all I was really hoping to do."

Ogden retired after playing 12 years with the Ravens as the team's incomparable left tackle. As an organization, the Ravens have been incredibly generous in supporting local high school football with Ed Reed, Daniel Wilcox, Ray Lewis, Jason Brown and a variety of other Ravens giving their time, money and other resources to area teams as well. Ogden's Play It Smart program at Patterson, Forest Park and other area schools will continue.

"I'm proud of what I did on the field, but at the same time how many lives did we affect?” Ogden said.

“Football's over for me, but I can still affect lives. Still, to this day that's what I'm trying to do. That is really what it's all about for me right now."

BAYS UNDER-15 SOCCER TEAM WINS NATIONAL TITLE

The Baltimore Casa Mia Bays Under-15 soccer team has done it again.

The Bays won the U.S. Youth Soccer championship last weekend, beating Solar Red of Texas, 2-1. A year ago, the Bays won the Under-14 national title, while two weeks ago, the Under-18 Casa Mia Bays won the National Soccer Academy championship in Carson City, California.

McDonogh coach Steve Nichols and Baltimore Blast president and general manager Kevin Healey coached the U-15 squad, which outscored the opposition, 10-1.
The Bays opened the tournament with a 5-0 shutout of the Boston Blast as Julian Griggs of McDonogh scored three goals. Logan McHugh and Jonathan Guzman also scored, and the Bays picked right up where they left off in the Region I tournament last month in Maine.

The Bays rolled to five wins in the regionals by a combined score of 23-2, including a 6-2 win over Syracuse in the semifinals and a 4-0 win over the same Boston Blast team they beat in the first round of the nationals.

Griggs and McDonogh teammate Mamadou Kansaye scored goals as the Bays beat the Dallas Texans, 2-0, in the second round. Guzman scored the game's only goal in their 1-0 win over the Chicago Fire last Friday to secure a spot in the championship.

Griggs scored just four minutes into the game in Saturday's title game, and Kansaye scored on a penalty kick five minutes into the second half. Daniel Forry scored for Solar at the 59-minute mark, the only goal of the tournament given up by Loyola Blakefield's goalkeeper Tim Peitsch. But the Bays closed out their second title in two years by outshooting Solar, 16-6.

Peitsch was named the tournament Golden Glove winner while Griggs won the Golden Boot award.
 
ONE BALTIMORE  GROUP GROWING

The One Baltimore monthly gatherings of former area basketball standouts and coaches gained a little extra "pop" two weeks ago when Rodney "Pop" Wright visited from his adopted home town of Des Moines, Iowa.

Wright was a tremendous player for coach Woody Williams at Lake Clifton High School in the mid-1970s. He helped the Lakers win back-to-back Maryland State Athletics A Conference championships in 1975 and '76, and just like he did when he played, he announced his presence at One Baltimore with authority.

"He came in with his all-time, All-MSA team," said former Edmondson standout Stacey Fowlkes. "He must've had 100 guys on the list. And guys were getting all angry and upset over who was on which team. It was hilarious."

"Pop's just Pop," said Timmy Greene, who organizes the monthly gatherings at an East Baltimore restaurant along with Jimmy Conyers, Donny Joy and Larry "Sook" Johnson. Joy and Greene both played on the Dunbar team that beat DeMatha in the 1973 showdown at the Baltimore Civic Center, and they have been instrumental in bringing back nearly 100 former local legends either at breakfast or dinner meetings since last fall.

Wright, who came through the Madison Square Recreation Center in East Baltimore, was a scoring machine at Lake Clifton, averaging more than 20 points a game in four varsity seasons. He scored 40 points in a game twice in 1977, against Polytechnic and City College. In the ’76 title game against Northwestern, he was unstoppable, hitting five long jump shots to give the Lakers a lead they never relinquished.

Wright and Arnold “Clyde” Gaines formed one of the best backcourts in area high school basketball, and the Lake Clifton team of 1976 is one of the best in local history. Wright, Gaines, Ernie and Kevin Graham, Robert Brown and sixth man Lance Hill set a standard that continues at the East Baltimore school. First under the leadership of Williams, then Charlie Moore and now Herman Harried, the Lakers have been a state power for more than 30 years.

Ernie Graham left Lake Clifton for Dunbar after the '76 season. Gaines went to Wisconsin along with former Northwestern star Ray Sydnor, while Wright went first to San Diego Community College and then to Drake University in Des Moines.

Wright now runs a non-profit program for at-risk kids called the Positive Outreach Program, an organization created out of his own drug and alcohol use.

"Since the age of 12, Pop had been abusing drugs and in high school added alcohol to the mix," the program's brochure reads. "After doing and dealing drugs for years, losing his dream basketball career and surviving gunshot and stab wounds, Pop's drug and alcohol habit was brought to a halt when he was arrested for check forgery in 1985."

Following that arrest and more than a year of rehabilitation, Wright began to turn things around, starting his non-profit P.O.P. program in 1988 and sharing his story with kids throughout the Midwest.

Two weeks ago, he returned home, attending the One Baltimore gathering with his brother Fred. He was the latest in a long line of local legends who have made the meetings a huge part of the basketball landscape.

Longtime coaches Frank Szymanski, Jerry Phipps and Sam Knicely were guests two weeks ago while former Towson University star, Roger Dickens, is also now a regular.

Dickens never played high school basketball at City College, but he eventually played for Phipps at the Community College of Baltimore and is among Towson's greatest players ever. In just two years he scored more than 1,000 points and helped the Tigers win 53 games and the 1978 Mason-Dixon Conference championship. He eventually followed Phipps to Liberty Road as the men's coach at Baltimore City Community College.

Many of his former Towson teammates, including Brian Matthews, Pat McKinley and Rod Norris, attend the One Baltimore gatherings while Szymanski, who coached against Towson while the men's coach at the University of Baltimore, made his first appearance two weeks ago.

The Towson-UB rivalry was the among the best on the East Coast in the 1970s with Baltimore's Ronald Smith, Kenny Sullivan, Cleveland Rudisill, Gerald Watson and George Pinchback playing with or against many of the Towson players in high school.

Knicely, meanwhile, coached the men's team at Catonsville Community College that featured many Baltimore City players including Greene, who was a junior college All-American at Catonsville in the late 1970s.

"Coach Knicely did a lot for me," Greene said. "He helped me see the big picture. Having him, Coach Syz and Coach Phipps show up just shows how big these things are getting. I get calls all the time from guys who played 20, 30 years ago."

"Now, if we can just get some young guys to show up and learn a little bit about the basketball history of the city."

Issue 3.31: July 31, 2008