My byline doesn't grace these pages as much as it used to, but I always have the itch to write.

And in my position as sports editor, I am sometimes privy to sports-related tidbits, nuggets and scuttlebutt that I am sure would appeal to our readers — if only the rest of my job didn't interfere with relaying that information.

But hopefully, with a semi-regular column, I can kill two birds with one stone: whet my appetite as a wordsmith, and peddle off notable or useless pieces of information that serve only to clutter my notebook. It's long time I emptied these pages out.

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It almost slipped through the cracks, but Warren County girls basketball coach Brandi Millar stepped down from her position in early March, just weeks after the Wildcats finished a 2-19 season.

The move comes after just two years at the helm of her alma mater, where she was an all-district performer and still ranks as the program's all-time leading scorer.

Millar admitted, however, that her success in uniform simply didn't translate to the sidelines.

"Playing basketball was something I loved so much, but coaching was just not a good fit with me," Millar said by phone on Wednesday. "I've spoken with different people, and they said that just because you were a good player doesn't mean you will be a good coach. I thought the girls deserved someone else."

Millar, who married in August, said she hopes to stay around athletics at Warren County, and didn't rule out a return to coaching at some point — just not anytime soon. A family could be on the horizon for the Millars, and juggling basketball, family and a teaching career is a daunting task.

"I'm happy I tried it," Millar said. "I just found out that it wasn't for me."

* * *

Speaking of Warren County, the softball team has struggled with a stripped-down roster after a plethora of players shifted to Skyline. That fact has led to a stressful season for head coach Justin Stock, who recognized early that he would have to be resourceful as the Wildcats tried to regroup.

"We knew that everybody was going to have to play a bunch of different positions," Stock said by phone on Tuesday.

Stock was referring to a question asked by yours truly, after it was noted that on Warren County's athletics Web site, each team members' position is listed as "TEAM PLAYER."

"I guess I thought it would motivate them," Stock said.

The Wildcats are still winless, but early season blowouts have been replaced by closely contested district battles over the past few weeks. Warren County lost 5-2 to Sherando, 8-3 to Skyline and 8-4 to James Wood in recent outings, giving Stock a reason to believe that maybe, just maybe, his group of "team players" were turning the corner.

* * *

In the April 9 issue of The Northern Virginia Daily, it was reported that James Wood offensive lineman Tre Kidwell had "agreed to walk-on at Shepherd" in football.

The choice of wording in the story — point the fingers at me, please — ruffled some feathers in the Colonels' football family. The Kidwells rejoiced in Tre's recruitment to Shepherd, but were forced to explain why he was labeled a walk-on in the paper.

Allow me to sort out the confusion.

The recruiting process for Division II is much different from FBS and FCS recruitment. Scholarships and other financial assistance for student-athletes is a rarity. In FBS and FCS circles, players are recruited and sign a National Letter-of-Intent, which binds a student-athlete to a program for a minimum of one year. Programs then fill out their roster with walk-ons, which simply means a student-athlete is paying their own way.

In Division II, however, it gets tricky.

According to Shepherd football coach Monte Cater, 13 to 19 members of the Rams' football team receive assistance in the form of an athletic scholarship, which means a majority of his powerhouse Division II program is made up of walk-ons (again, those that do not receive money), which is why I used the term. The catch is, according to Cater, that since upwards of 75 percent of the roster are walk-ons, that term is seldom used.

When I erroneously referred to Kidwell as a walk-on, it was perceived as a slight. Kidwell was recruited hard by Cater, who told me that he expects Kidwell to have a "great career" at Shepherd.

So to clarify, Kidwell is not a walk-on. He was recruited to Shepherd for football, and signed an Institutional Letter-of-Intent with the school, which announced Kidwell's addition in a press release on April 30.

My bad, Tre.

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