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By Mike Klingaman | Sun Reporter

November 27, 2005

STEVE HOFF

The farmer had hay to bale, barley to cut and steers to feed. But Steve Hoff, 47, took time out from working the family's 350-acre farm to dig up the past.

Twenty-nine years ago, Hoff made it into "Faces" as the first high school wrestler in Maryland history to win three state championships - the last in 1976.

The plaudits brought colleges rushing to his doorstep on Bethel Road.

"My gosh, I had [scholarship] offers coming out of my ears," said Hoff, a graduate of Westminster High. He turned them all down to stay home and work the farm with his father.

Regrets? He has none.

"When you're happy with what you're doing, you don't worry about it too much," he said.

But on rainy days, once the livestock have been fed and the other chores are finished, Hoff might pull out his scrapbook with the dog-eared magazine and read it one more time.

STEVE MARTIN

Water helped get Steve Martin into the magazine. It nearly wiped out his souvenirs from it.

Martin, who won the intercollegiate single-handed sailing championship in 1964, feared he had lost his copies of SI last year when two hurricanes flooded his home in Vero Beach, Fla.

"We had to throw out a lot of stuff, but thank goodness the magazines weren't part of it," he said.

A native of Bay Ridge, Martin attended Severn School and graduated from the Coast Guard Academy, where he later taught. At 63, he still takes to the shallow waters nearby in his 21-foot sailboat.

"It's immensely satisfying to do something all by yourself and to manipulate the forces of nature," he said.

ARNOLD SING

When the phone rang in his family's home in Columbia, Arnold Sing answered it, as 15-year-olds are wont to do.

"Check out Sports Illustrated," a friend said. "You're in it."

That was in 1978. But Sing still recalls the satisfaction he felt in being tabbed for winning the U.S. Judo Federation junior championships while he was a student at Oakland Mills High.

"Being chosen [for the magazine] helped me to continue in that sport," he said. "And it helped to validate the martial arts, which really weren't a big thing then."

Sing is now a ship harbor pilot in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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