Sherwood athlete chooses hoops, Ball State

‘‘For the past few months, the whole recruiting thing has been kind of stressful,” Twyman said. ‘‘I’m excited. I’m still kind of nervous about going out there, but I’m looking forward to it.”

In his junior and senior seasons at Sherwood, Twyman was named to the All-Gazette first team for both football and basketball. He was an All-Gazette second teamer in both sports as a sophomore. In his three years as a varsity athlete, the teams he played on won a combined 80 games and lost 31.

As the quarterback of the football team, Twyman passed for 7,062 yards and 80 touchdowns in his career, both county records as far as anyone can tell. He led the Warriors to state runner-up finishes in his junior and senior seasons.

As a guard on the basketball team, he scored approximately 1,250 career points. When it mattered most, he scored 22 and 26 points, respectively, in the 2007 state semifinals and finals at the University of Maryland’s Comcast Center. He capped his high-school career with his first state championship and first All-Gazette Player of the Year award.

Twyman had always planned to play college football, and said he attracted interest from Division I schools during his junior campaign. Two things stood in his way. At 5-foot-11, 175 pounds, he is undersized for a college quarterback, and his test scores did not qualify him to receive a college scholarship.

He considered junior college and prep school as options, but wanted the Division I scholarship. As his senior basketball season progressed, it became apparent that his second sport might be the quicker route to that goal.

‘‘After a while, I figured since it was coming easy to the kid, why shouldn’t he give basketball a shot?” Sherwood basketball coach Dondrell Whitmore said. ‘‘We were getting further and further in the playoffs, and finally, winning the state championship made the decision to play football a lot harder.”

North Carolina Central (Division II) and Liberty (Va.) University (Division I-AA) showed interest in Twyman as a football player, but neither made offers. For basketball, he received other offers from Robert Morris (Pa.), Radford (Va.) and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

He took the ACT test for the final time in April, and learned on May 5 that his score qualified him for a Division I scholarship under NCAA rules. Ball State offered immediately, and Twyman accepted. He said that Eastern Michigan — like Ball State, a member of the Mid-American Conference — came in with a football offer last Thursday night, after he had committed to Ball State for basketball.

With the Cardinals, Twyman has an opportunity to contribute immediately. Within the last month, three guards due to return to the team have transferred from Ball State.

‘‘I think it is fair to say [the team needed guards],” Ball State head coach Ronnie Thompson said. ‘‘To add to that, any time you have a chance to get a kid like Deontay Twyman, regardless of what you may currently have, it’s exciting.”

Thompson is the son of former Georgetown head coach John Thompson Jr. and brother of current Hoyas coach John Thompson III. Ball State assistant Bill Howze is a former head coach at Archbishop Carroll High in Washington, D.C., and an acquaintance of Springbrook assistant basketball coach Darnell Myers, who once coached Twyman at Sherwood.

Twyman said he will concentrate full-time on basketball as a freshman, but did not rule out the possibility of walking on to the football team in the future, and resuming his two-sport career.

‘‘The first year, it will be all basketball,” he said. ‘‘But you never know. I’m not really sure. But they offered me a full scholarship for basketball, and that’s what I’ll be going there for.”