Still a couple of weeks from his 16th birthday and little more than a month removed from an All-Metro football season, Gilman junior defensive end Victor Abiamiri found himself across the desk from a man offering him a very big job.
"We need you to help us win a national football title," said Maryland football coach Ralph Friedgen, looking deep into Abiamiri's eyes during an unofficial recruiting visit to the campus in January. "You are the final piece to the puzzle."
"He got right to the point, didn't mince words," said Rita Abiamiri, who was also in Friedgen's Byrd Stadium office during the 10-minute meeting, when he offered the youngest and largest of her three sons a scholarship.
Robert, 19, and Paschal, 18, Mount St. Joseph graduates, already are scholarship players for the Terps.
Within a week of his visit, Abiamiri received a handwritten letter from Terps defensive line coach Dave Sollazo. "Everybody wants you here, Victor, especially me," the letter read. "There's a lot of excitement on this campus for you and your family. What a great place to be and get a good education."
But it appears the Terps will have to stand in line. Though Maryland is among the final six colleges Abiamiri, now a senior, is considering, just about every major Division I school is after him.
"He's a guy who has gotten offers from the big three in Florida - Florida State, Florida and Miami," said a California-based recruiting analyst, Brian Stumpf, an editor with Student Sports.com.
"A handful of Gilman players have gone Division I, but nobody's been recruited like this," said Gilman coach Biff Poggi, whose Greyhounds take on nationally ranked DeMatha of Hyattsville on Friday night at Morgan State. "No disrespect to the other guys, but we've never had anyone like Victor at Gilman."
A powerfully constructed 6 feet 5, 240 pounds, Abiamiri darts around the field with the grace of a running back or wide receiver. He is rated among the top three defensive end recruits and the 24th-best overall prospect by The Sporting News/Student Sports football preview magazine.
He has clocked a 4.5-second 40-yard dash, bench-pressed 320 pounds and recorded a 38-inch vertical leap. A center in basketball and a champion shot-putter, discus thrower and triple-jumper, Abiamiri has been an honor roll student all three years at Gilman, carrying an A-minus average and scoring 1,140 on the SAT.
Like his brothers, who are both wide receivers at Maryland, Abiamiri never played a down of organized football before high school. But in only three years, the youngest Abiamiri has developed into the most sought-after recruit out of Baltimore since Dunbar's Tommy Polley (Florida State) and McDonogh's Bobby Sabelhaus (Florida) in the mid-1990s.
"I'd like to say we developed him," Poggi said, "but he was already a Rembrandt when he came to us."
All the tools
"As a freshman, you'd have never believed he hadn't played football. Victor was just well-equipped mentally and physically to pick up information, process it and execute," said Gilman defensive line coach Johnny Foreman.
"Things like using your hands to get separation from the offensive linemen, your speed in stepping with your power foot into the area closest to the point of attack, the swim and the spin move. His range of motion was almost natural."
Said Stumpf: "You're talking about a guy who could change your defense over the course of four years."
Gilman assistant Keith Kormanik sent nearly 40 highlight videos of Abiamiri to recruiters beginning in December, and they all seemed similarly impressed.
Virginia coach Al Groh wrote: "Victor, just finished watching your film. I want to coach you."
What did Groh and the others see?
In a game against Mount St. Joseph, Abiamiri is shown bolting past a stocky lineman for a sack. Then Abiamiri plows through a double team, pushing one blocker aside, the other to the ground. Sack. Later, obstructed by a defender, he jumps and stretches his left hand skyward to deflect.
Mount St. Joseph quarterback Nick Tanis can attest to what it's like to face Abiamiri.
"Victor's the kind of player that, when you go to block him, he won't stay blocked. He gets close by, with his long arms, and he's so fast, that it's hard to get away," Tanis said. "You're trying to keep your eyes on your receivers down the field, but you have to try to keep one eye on him every single play."
At his home in Randallstown, Victor Abiamiri is "Ikechukwu," his Nigerian middle name, which means "God's power." He is still the "little boy in our house," said his mother, Rita, whose other two sons each stand 6-3.
Victor has the tiniest of the siblings' bedrooms, with a bed so short, his feet dangle off its end.
In the Abiamiris' living room, hangs a plaque reading, "God made us a family." Photos of the boys - all of whom attended a small, Catholic school in Randallstown called Holy Family - depict them dressed in coats and ties.
"We brought them up to know that, to whom much is given, much is expected," Rita said. Two of her brothers are doctors and another an engineer. Abiamiri's father, Peter Abiamiri, has three Catholic priests on his side of the family.
The Abiamiri brothers' athletic talent likely wouldn't have been predicted by their parents.
"I played soccer; wasn't very good," said Peter, a Baltimore social worker. Rita, a nurse, dabbled with "net ball," a spinoff of basketball she played in Nigeria, where she and her husband lived until moving to America in 1981.
Football or is it soccer?
The Abiamiris steered all three boys into recreational basketball before high school, but tried to prevent their first-born from playing organized football for the first time as a Mount St. Joseph freshman.
"Football was very big in Nigeria, but my concept of football was soccer," Rita said. "So when Robert came home with this permission slip for a tryout for football, I signed it. When I realized what it was about - that it was American football - we tried to stop him. He was so miserable because he wasn't playing and he wanted to play."
Gaels coach Mike Working persuaded her to "give Robert a chance," and his younger brothers followed him into the sport. Six years later, a living room photo shows Robert in his Terps jersey, a helmet tucked under his right arm.
On a recent day, Victor Abiamiri sat near that picture, sifting through a box crammed with recruiting letters. A note from Notre Dame trumpeted, "YOU, VICTOR," next to an arrow pointing at a diagram of a defensive end pursuing a quarterback. Another, from Duke, stated, "WE WANT YOU, VICTOR."
A North Carolina recruiter wrote: "Abiamiri Commits to UNC. What a headline that would be."
"After a while, they start saying the same things," said Abiamiri, sitting on a couch near a window. "You've got to start filtering out in a school what you want, rather than, 'Was his line better than the other guy's line?' or 'Was there more in this guy's letter than the other?' "
Abiamiri has narrowed his choices to Maryland, Stanford, UCLA, Notre Dame, North Carolina and Southern California, and hopes to whittle the list to five by Sunday. He will then take his NCAA-sanctioned five paid college visits. He plans to sign a letter of intent in February, although he might commit earlier.
"I want to go to a school that will care about me as a person - my character - and help me develop as a man when all of the sacking and all the tackles and all of that's over," Abiamiri said. "I want a coach that wants to see me get my degree, see me get my diploma, see me work on Wall Street or see me be a doctor - just as importantly than see me get that sack and help them win this game."
Will his family ties to Maryland steer Abiamiri to College Park?
"We've always been together. I can't picture us apart," said Robert Abiamiri, a sophomore. "If Victor came to Maryland, our parents could come see our games. I think that would be the best thing for the family."
Robert said he feels no pressure from the Maryland staff to recruit his youngest brother. Paschal, a freshman, chose to follow his older brother both to Mount St. Joseph and Maryland, but Victor made a different high school choice and may do the same for college.
"When Paschal chose Maryland, he was like, 'My brother's there. We're playing the same position. He can be my mentor,' " Victor said. "I play a different position. I don't want to make a quick decision or have any regrets."
Abiamiri's January visit to Maryland actually marked the second time in 12 months Friedgen approached him. He was 14 years old the first time, but Friedgen was more direct during their most recent conversation.
"For him to say I'm the key to a national championship, you say to yourself, 'Are you serious? You really think that much of me?' " Abiamiri said.
Within an hour of his visit with Friedgen, Abiamiri entered Cole Field House for a Maryland-Duke basketball game to the chants of "We want Victor. We want Victor."
"I was in awe," Abiamiri said. "I had to ask my mother to be sure they were talking about me."