Former county standouts walking tall for Terps football

Northwest’s Lee Oliver earning playing time

However, for a quartet of former Montgomery County high school athletes, the struggles are worth it.

Perhaps none has struggled more then inside linebacker Brian Dickerson, a 2004 Whitman grad who is set to begin his fourth year at Maryland in hopes of finally getting game action. After a redshirt season in his first year, he was on the cusp of playing time in 2005, even once winning practice player of the week honors, and seemingly poised for a breakout 2006.

But Dickerson tore up his knee in last season’s spring game, and the rehabilitation process has been difficult both physically and mentally. Aside from recuperating from the actual pain, he is now 21 years old, and the light at the end of the tunnel is growing dimmer and dimmer with each passing day.

He is currently the third-string ‘‘Mike” (inside) linebacker in the Terps’ 3-4 scheme, behind junior Chase Bullock and redshirt freshman Alex Wujciak, but his hopes are still high.

‘‘I just can’t see myself not playing football,” Dickerson said. ‘‘I mean, it’s a lot of hard work, I’m not getting paid, so it’s all for the love of the game. I’m old now in the program, so I just want to do whatever I can to get on the field in my last year.”

The journey hasn’t been half as treacherous for fellow linebacker Moise Fokou, a Bullis alum, who made the jump from scout team player to potential starter in a little over a year. After a freshman season at Frostburg, where he ranked second on the team in tackles, he transferred to Maryland and used his year off to dazzle coaches with his speed, size and quickness. He is now a scholarship player.

At 6-foot-1 and 216 pounds, Fokou is slightly undersized but plenty athletic for the position, and used his agility to earn playing time a year ago on special teams. He parlayed that into more playing time at the ‘‘Will” linebacker spot, behind starter Erin Henderson, where he made 21 tackles and forced two fumbles.

He has moved to the other side, to the ‘‘Sam” position, where he will compete with redshirt freshman Adrian Moten to make the first team.

‘‘It’s been a tremendous journey, coming from Bullis — I’ve gotten to experience a lot of highs and a lot of lows but right now, I think I’m happy,” said Fokou, who earned All-Gazette honorable-mention honors in 2003.”

Linebacker a difficult position for a walk-on, in part because it is such a heavily recruited position. But offensive linemen, whose skills aren’t as quantifiable on a game tape, can sometimes slip through the recruiting cracks.

Northwest graduate Lee Oliver is slowly but surely proving his talents, climbing his way up to the backup right guard spot, with the potential to start next year when senior second-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference lineman Andrew Crummey graduates. Like Dickerson and Fokou, Oliver is a fourth-year junior, and played well as a starter in the spring game.

Oliver saw time at both guard spots on the scout team last year, when the Terps’ offensive line was decimated by injuries. Now more specialized on the right side, he should see time on Saturdays this year. The Gaithersburg product was already prepared for Ralph Friedgen’s multi-look offense from the time he hit campus.

‘‘We pretty much ran things the same way at Northwest — it was like a college program up there,” said Oliver, a second-team All-Gazette lineman in 2003. ‘‘I started my last two years there, which really helped me a lot, because we didn’t run simple plays. With Randy [Trivers, Northwest’s head coach], we shifted, ran motion, just had all kinds of special plays, so I already knew a lot of the different types of formations when I came here.”

Redshirt freshman Paul Pinegar also played in a pro-style offense in high school, under offensive coordinator Terry Changuris and head coach Al Thomas at Sherwood. But as Pinegar admits, his contribution for the Warriors was more on the defensive side of the ball, helping the team reach the Class 4A State Championship Game in 2005.

So when, as an invited walk-on, Maryland defensive line coach Chris Cosh asked him if he’d like to try out on the scout team’s offensive front five, it took Pinegar by surprise. At 277 pounds, he’s light for an ACC left tackle. But lo and behold, after just one season, he’s already listed as the backup at the position, behind senior Scott Burley. With another year of work, he has a shot to be starting by next season.