
DATE: Tuesday, September 30, 1997           TAG: 9709300266

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Chesapeake Weighs Grade Standards  

SOURCE: BY VICKI L. FRIEDMAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  131 lines

PALS EXCEL IN CLASS AND ATHLETICS

Oscar Smith's Jamie Burke is joking when she says she and Brooke Coley were separated at birth, but in truth, birth is about the only thing separating the two seniors.

Both 16, Burke and Coley were born 10 days apart. They transferred to the same middle school on the same day five years ago and remember passing in the hall outside the guidance office. They share Social Security numbers four digits apart - far more than what stands between their grade-point averages: Coley is ranked No. 1 in the class, Burke is No. 2.

``I have a 4.3565,'' Coley says of her GPA.

``A 4.2 something, something, something,'' Burke says of hers.

Advanced placement courses can push students' GPAs beyond 4.0.

Good friends, Burke and Coley are tenacious competitors in academics as well as athletics, where they are teammates in field hockey and soccer.

``It's always a cycle,'' says Coley, who also plays basketball. `` `You get me; I get you back. You get the best of me next time.' We go at it.''

Neither one has ever had problems juggling sports and school. Coley is often up past midnight finishing homework and Burke wakes up early to complete assignments. Both say it is a matter of priorities and using weekends to catch up. Both are in favor of a mandatory 2.0 GPA for athletes.

``School is a place where you go for school; you don't go to play athletics,'' Burke says. ``It's a secondary privilege to be able to play sports.''

Says Coley: ``Personally I think it should have been a requirement a long time ago. If I can't get a 1.9, what do I need to play sports for? That's the time I should be studying, getting extra help from my teachers.''

Coley calls herself a visual learner, an athlete with a keen analytical ability that helps her beat opponents with her smarts. She is senior class president and on this year's homecoming court. Coley can recite every B she has ever received and the reasons why. The B from seventh grade English - she had a 92.4 average and 93 was considered an A - was the turning point for her academically, when the drive for grades became less natural and more from determination.

``You see your report card and go A, A, A - B! Your eyes get big,'' she says.

If Coley isn't studying, playing a sport, participating in another extracurricular or working one of two shoe store jobs, she picks up a book or scans the Internet for scholarships.

``The time to be complacent is when you get that diploma that says valedictorian,'' she says.

Burke is a natural learner, a tomboy who isn't much into homecoming courts or wearing skirts to play sports. She shows off scratches that stem from a friendly card game. A gutsy athlete without any showy skills, Burke played offensive tackle on the junior varsity football team as a freshman. A knee injury her sophomore year caused her to give up football and switch to field hockey as a junior. She used to throw the shot in track and carries a passion for soccer

Burke doesn't study herself silly and is prone to a whim. Friday night she stayed up all night for a movie marathon that started with ``Bad Girls'' and ended with ``Kung Fu'' reruns.

While Coley tells stories behind old grades, Burke recounts past high school games. Like Coley, she has a memory for detail.

``My sophomore year we played Great Bridge in soccer and we were tied 1-1 with 30 seconds left in overtime,'' says Burke, who played goalie for the Tigers. ``This girl took a shot from the outside right wing. I thought the ball was going out-of-bounds, so I didn't stop it and they beat us 2-1. I was beyond upset. My team ended up getting me a card.''

Her field hockey highlight came earlier this season when, as the goalie, Burke stopped a penalty stroke in a 1-0 win over Hickory. She prefers to play a position in the field, as she did last year when she was a sweeper, but anterior cruciate ligament surgery on her right knee during this summer has limited Burke to playing in goal.

That doesn't sit so well with Burke, who is itching to run the field. Or with Coley, last year's goalie who was displaced by Burke and says she is often confused about where she should be in her new role as an offensive player.

But in typical Coley-Burke style, the reversal of roles has added another layer to their competitiveness in practice.

``When I was goalie I can remember when Jamie would come up with her stick and dribble and she'd shoot and make it. I'd say, `All right, all right,' and come back with something,'' Coley says. ``She got the best of me then. Now I come out and I'm like, `Uh oh. Watch out now. Watch out for my shots.' ''

Oscar Smith field hockey coach Patty Walsh says Burke wins with brawn, Coley with finesse. ``Brooke will figure a way around things,'' she says. ``Jamie will hit things head-on, like a bull in a china shop.''

The real test is in class, where both assure any rivalry is friendly. Burke held the top spot in class rank two years ago, but Coley surged ahead, thanks to an A in advanced placement biology. Last summer Coley took physics and came out with a B, so she is repeating the course and going for an A. In addition to that physics class, Coley has another: AP physics.

``When it comes down to class rank,'' she says, ``every .0001 matters.''

Like Burke, Coley excels at math and science and lists chemistry as her all-time favorite class. Coley's ambitions have fluctuated from lawyer to senator to neurosurgeon, but she settled on chemical engineering after working at NASA over the summer. Duke is her dream school, but the list also includes Virginia, Virginia Tech, Penn and Maryland-Baltimore County. She may try to play field hockey, soccer or basketball in college as a walk-on.

Burke is applying to the Air Force Academy, Harvard, Penn, Virginia and Davidson. Depending on where she goes and how her knee holds up, Burke may consider trying to make the soccer team as a walk-on. She plans to major in biochemistry and wants to go into orthopedics or veterinary medicine.

``I think it would be cool to be one of the big-animal vets in the middle of nowhere,'' she says.

Burke says she'd like to regain the top spot in the class rankings, but it's no big obsession. Either way it's likely both will make speeches at graduation, one as valedictorian, the other as salutatorian.

``We'd probably give pretty similar speeches because we'll probably work with each other on them,'' Burke says. ``We both put emphasis on education and the future.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Seniors Brooke Coley, left, and Jamie Burke rank No. 1 and 2,

respectively, in academics at Oscar Smith High. They are also

teammates in field hockey and soccer.

Graphic

BROOKE COLEY

Age: 16

GPA: 4.3

Courses: AP government, AP physics,

Spanish 5, AP English

Sports: Field hockey, soccer, basketball

JAMIE BURKE