For the imminently passe print issue of Washington City Paper, I wrote a column on Montrose Christian basketball coach Stu Vetter. Pick up a copy if you can still find one. Pick up two if you can find two. Read the story. Get a D1 hoops scholarship.

I’ve been aware of Vetter since I was in high school, when he stole the best basketball player at my beloved Falls Church High School for the fledgling hoops program he was building at Flint Hill, a nearby private school. Post-Flint Hill, Keller ended up having a good career playing college ball at Appalachian State. Had he stayed at FCHS, he likely wouldn’t have gotten such a nice free ride.

A few years later, while Flint Hill was playing its games at another of my former alma maters, the hellish Whittier Jr. High in downtown Falls Church, Vetter’s squad featured  future Georgia Tech superstar and NBA 3-point-shooting genius Dennis Scott.

And the big names have been coming ever since. From the start, Vetter got good players to come to his school, whatever that school was, and then he got them into good college programs.

While he’s perhaps best known as Kevin Durant‘s high school coach, Vetter’s name recognition could go up around the globe come the London Olympics. Four of Vetter’s former players at Montrose Christian will be playing in the 2012 basketball tournament, all for different countries: Durant will be the star of USA squad; ex-Maryland Terrapin captain Greivis Vasquez will be with Venezuela; Linas Klieza will suit up for Lithuania; and K.J. Matsui will ball for his native Japan.

Vetter told me Matsui, who went on after Montrose to captain the Columbia University basketball team, came to Montrose via the summer camps that Vetter ran in the Far East.

That’s likely never happened before. If it happens again, it’ll probably be more Vetter charges that make it happen.

Yet for all his accomplishments, Vetter doesn’t have much of a presence in the D.C. area.

That’s probably because he’d rather be recruiting around the globe or, as was clear when I tried to get him to talk about himself for my column, doing anything besides getting interviewed.

Though, in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have opened the interview accusing him of stealing Paul Keller from my school all those years ago….