Senior Makes Leap to Get Jump on College

Paul VI Catholic guard Erick Green emerged from the home locker room last week with teammates he was still getting to know and jogged around a gymnasium where he had played just once in his decorated prep basketball career.

In the sparse crowd that dotted the bleachers at the Fairfax private school, Green did not see any faces that he had known for more than a few months. He was far from home. He was far from his friends. He was far from the identity he had created in three spectacular seasons 55 miles away at Millbrook High School outside Winchester.

Only eight months ago, Green, a 6-foot-3 All-Met point guard, led Millbrook to the Virginia AA title, capturing the first basketball championship of any kind for a Winchester area public school. He had swept nearly every postseason honor, earned a scholarship to Virginia Tech and laid the groundwork for a senior season that many teenagers would dream of.

But in August, Green transferred to Paul VI, and he will compete in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, widely regarded as one of the top prep leagues in the nation. Instead of being with longtime friends and enjoying the comforts of home, Green will spend the next year training at a grueling pace, navigating a challenging course load and attending school with relative strangers.

"Winchester is his heart," said Green's father, also named Erick, who showed up just before Paul VI's tip-off last week against Cesar Chavez with Erick's mother, Tamara. "He misses home and he misses his friends, but he knows he's here for a purpose."

That purpose is to prepare for life next year in the Atlantic Coast Conference, where Green will compete against some of the finest college players in the country. He will get a head start by playing this year in a league that features three other point guards -- Bishop O'Connell's Kendall Marshall (North Carolina), Gonzaga's Tyler Thornton (Duke) and DeMatha's Josh Selby (Tennessee) -- who are among the nation's best high schoolers.

"It's definitely about getting better," Green said. "I thought coming here, this was going to be pushing me. This year's a big year for me, and I have to get ready for what's next."

Green was raised in Winchester, about 10 miles from the West Virginia border, but his game and maturity attracted the attention of AAU coaches from the Washington area. In addition to a soft shooting stroke and deft court vision, Green kept a spiral notebook in his bedroom in which he listed goals he hoped to accomplish on the basketball court and in the classroom: He wanted to become the state's player of the year, average 20 points a game and earn a good grade in his Spanish class.

Such focus led Green to play for the District-based Triple Threat AAU team two years ago under coaches Kenneth Johnson and Adrian Autry, who at the time were both assistants at Paul VI. Johnson and Autry regularly suggested to Green the benefits of playing for a private school -- more practice time, better competition, increased exposure -- and Green's parents, both former college athletes, agreed.

"We felt like, let's get him a head start," the elder Erick Green said. "Let's get him in a situation where night in and night out he's playing against other Division I kids. We needed to get him ready for the ACC, and this would give him a better look of what it's going to be like at the next level."

Green contemplated transferring before his junior season, but he returned to Millbrook and won a state championship with teammates he had been playing with since he was 4 years old. Green went back and forth again this summer when it came time to make a decision about his senior season. The Pioneers were set to return three other starters, and he had established a strong bond with Millbrook Coach Scott Mankins, who had coached Green since he was a tentative, skinny freshman on the varsity team.

But Green and his parents were concerned he would not be pushed hard enough by the competition in the Northwestern District, a league composed of teams in the northern Shenandoah Valley. A team from the league had not won a state championship before Millbrook last season, and it infrequently produced Division I players.