La Plata Principal Donald Cooke declined to comment on Gross, only saying, "The only thing I can confirm is that he is off the golf team," and acknowledged Gross is no longer taking classes at the school.
As he did last spring, Gross left La Plata to be home-schooled, hoping that will allow him to catch up on his grades and get on track for a spring graduation.
Joe Gross, right, a two-time Maryland golf champion, is off the La Plata high school team and no longer enrolled at the school after a year that included a stroke suffered by his father Joe Sr., left.
(Katherine Frey - The Washington Post)
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Gross had played in local and out-of-town tournaments three or four weekends each month for the better part of five years, but he has barely played since his father's stroke. Gross said he did not want to go to events by himself and worry about rushing back if his father took a turn for the worse.
Without a high school team, and being a faint memory to many regulars on the junior tour circuit, Gross fell off the recruiting map.
"A lot of people knew who he was," said one college coach who was recruiting Gross, and asked not to be identified to prevent breaking NCAA recruiting rules. "We were following him and then, all of a sudden, he disappeared. People started wondering about him. . . .
"You wonder a couple of things: Did he play another sport? Did he have academic problems? Did he really want to play golf?"
Gross says he is resigned to losing a shot at a scholarship.
"That's a $100,000 scholarship down the drain," Gross said. "I thought about it for a minute and the loss of all that money . . . but it means nothing when the life of a parent or someone you care about is starting to deteriorate."
The living room of the Grosses' La Plata home is filled with several photographs of their son posing with golf luminaries -- including Arnold Palmer -- and about 100 of their son's tournament trophies and medals. Several others are packed away.
In December 2002, the Grosses sold their La Plata house -- which had a basement ceiling high enough for Joe Jr. to take practice swings into a net -- and moved into a two-story townhouse nearby. It was supposed to be a temporary relocation. The Grosses bought land for a new house near the fifth hole of the course at Swan Point Yacht & Country Club, which sits on the southern tip of Charles County along the banks of the Potomac River.
Construction plans were delayed in the summer of 2003, and later that fall, Joe Sr. fell ill. Sharon quit her job to take care of him. Any thoughts of moving were postponed. Swan Point is a half-hour from La Plata, the nearest stores and the hospital.
When Joe Sr.'s health began to seesaw last winter -- promising weeks were followed by dismal ones -- his son's grades and behavior turned similarly inconsistent.
"Golf had been his life and it consumed his life," Meiser said. "I saw a boy just trying to find himself."
By the last quarter of last year, Gross turned to home-schooling to rescue his grades and also to keep an eye on his father. But at the end of the summer, Gross wanted to return to La Plata to play his senior season of high school golf.
