Broomfield Playing Up to High Expectations

When the St. Mary's Ryken girls' basketball team walks into a gym, Coach Tara Everly hears what she calls the "chitter-chatter" as those in the stands whisper to each other and point at her star player, senior Laura Broomfield.

The attention mostly comes from the fact that Broomfield signed with North Carolina this past November. But what most spectators don't know is that Broomfield, who tore ligaments in her right knee and femur against Carroll during her sophomore season, has had much more to worry about than just getting ready for one of the top college programs in the nation.

"She's got huge expectations," Everly said. "She wants to do well for the team and take it to another level, she's still working her way back to 100 percent and she's one of the top kids in the country. All that wrapped up into one, it's a lot."

But as Everly says, Broomfield has grown every game this season. The 6-foot-1 forward is averaging nearly 19 points per game to lead St. Mary's Ryken to a 12-13 record and 6-11 mark in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference -- a big change after the Knights won just one game last season. Ryken had won three straight before last night's loss to St. John's. Broomfield averaged more than 24 points in those wins.

Broomfield always was eager to prove she hadn't lost a step as a result of the injury, and her play is showing that she never did.

"In the beginning I was definitely trying to get it all back in one day and live up to the expectations I had for myself and everyone else had," Broomfield said. "Now [the expectations] are more like a challenge that I just play through."

Jay Strong on Offensive Boards

Madison senior center Marygrace Jay scored 33 points last week in a win over Langley, the highest total for any Warhawks player during the seven-year tenure of Coach Denise Weinig.

A further examination of the statistics from that game shows why the 6-foot-3 Jay had such a productive night -- 14 of her 20 rebounds were on the offensive end.

"I think half her points, at least, were off those," Weinig said.

For the night, Jay made 14 of 25 field goal attempts. Two games before that, she scored 30 points against Stone Bridge.

The No. 12 Warhawks, who have clinched the Virginia AAA Liberty District regular season title, have won 19 straight since a season-opening loss to Centreville. Their closest game in the district was a six-point loss to W.T. Woodson, a team Madison hosts Friday in the regular season finale.

Vikings Have Mark in Sight

With three more victories, No. 13 Mount Hebron will become just the third Howard County team this decade to finish the regular season undefeated. Two years ago the Vikings started 13-3. Last year they made it all the way to 16-1.

But this season, Coach Scott Robinson's defensive-minded squad -- which has yielded just 33.7 points per game -- is 19-0 with three games left in the regular season. River Hill accomplished the feat in 2004-05, then did it again the following year, capping it off with a state championship.

Mount Hebron is 74-17 (.813 winning percentage) since the start of the 2004-05 season, but has no state tournament appearances to show for it, always falling short in the 3A East Region playoffs.

This year, though, Mount Hebron's enrollment fell, and the school was reclassified to 2A.

The Vikings will avoid Howard County's second-best team, Atholton (16-3), which plays in 3A, but there still is one daunting obstacle between them and their first state tourney appearance since 1995: No. 14 Gwynn Park, which is 17-1 in a Prince George's County League that is considered more difficult than Howard.

Staff writer Preston Williams and special correspondent Dave Yanovitz contributed to this report.