Fascinating story yesterday on Josh Barr‘s recruiting blog at the Washington Post. Barr tells how O’Connell star Kendall Marshall, almost a sure thing for the Post’s All-Met teams this season, didn’t even make the all-star team for his own league, the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference .

And not because of his play this season: Marshall was O’Connell’s best player, as expected. Turns out Marshall’s coach, Joe Wootten, didn’t nominate Marshall for postseason honors, which are voted by WCAC coaches.

I’ve been following Marshall since he played varsity for Evangel Christian, a podunk private school in Dale City, as an 11-year-old sixth grader. In a game played the week I wrote about him, Marshall outscored the entire opposition and all his Evangel teammates in an 84-16 win.)

He was already a known quantity on the national kiddie hoops recruiting scene by then.

He’s a much better known quantity these days. Marshall committed to North Carolina last school year, at the beginning of just his sophomore year of high school, which is unheard of around here.

The New York Times just profiled him, mentioning his early fame, but neglecting to mention that somewhere along the line Marshall was given an extra year of school for athletic reasons—-since by all accounts he’s a smart kid and good student, the only logical explanation for Marshall’s redshirt year is to give him an unfair advantage over kids who do 12 grades in 12 years. (The headline of my first story about Marshall, written in February 2003 when he was in sixth grade, was “The Class of 2009.” He’s now in O’Connell’s Class of 2010.)

But, back to Marshall’s most recent renown: Why would a coach leave his star off the ballot?

Who knows.

But rumors abound that Marshall will be transferring to a non-WCAC school for his senior year of high school. If so, that would be the fourth school he played varsity ball for.

Any coach would feel bad to lose a player of Marshall’s caliber to a local program. Not that that has anything to do with Marshall’s being left off the WCAC ballot. Not at all.

Barr’s story said Wootten didn’t return a phone call to comment on the Marshall situation.