The first Good Samaritan Bowl, played at the
Navy-Marine Corp Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, MD pitted high school stars from
the Baltimore and Washington, DC areas against one another. The West squad was
quarterbacked by VT signee Ike Whitaker, who was under pressure all game and had
a bad night: 4-of-23 with three interceptions. The East squad was headlined by a
Maryland signee and former VT recruiting target, DT Melvin Alaeze.

With
I-95 basically being the dividing line, the East squad consisted mainly of
players from the eastern Maryland suburbs and Baltimore area while the West
consisted of western Maryland suburbs, inner-city DC, and northern Virginia. The
East squad was noticeably larger with a full 44 participants whereas the West
squad only had 32 players. To be successful, the bowl game will have to be able
to recruit the more notable players from northern Virginia in the future to have
a balanced game (only a couple of Virginia players participated). This game was
basically an eastern vs. western Maryland all-star game.

The Naval Academy Stadium made a nice venue for
the all-star game. However, the crowd was sparse with maybe 2000 fans attending.
As would be expected, the first game was fairly chaotic with a number of initial
penalties for illegal substitutions and illegal procedures. The game had the
typical all-star game rules, such as only four players were allowed to rush (for
both passing plays as well as punts and field goals), and considerable
substitutions, including many players appearing on both offense and defense.

The effort was excellent for a game without
natural rivalries, but the execution was inconsistent. In general, the quality
of play in this game was a bit lower than the more mature all-star games, such
as the Virginia High School Coaches Association and North Carolina Shrine Bowl
games.

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