Attendance

Hundreds of people lined up on sun-drenched asphalt Saturday to see if they could get regular payouts, in the form of paychecks, from the new Maryland Live! Casino, a slots casino scheduled to open at Arundel Mills mall in about three months. "I hope I get lucky enough to get a position," said Mark Ellison, who's from West Baltimore. "They want people who are willing to go the extra mile so customers come in and enjoy spending their money. " The operators of what will be the state's largest casino hosted a job fair Saturday with the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corp.

The One Love Foundation, the nonprofit organization created in 2010 to honor the memory of Yeardley Reynolds Love (YRL), announced that Maryland attackman-midfielder Joe Cummings (Loyola High) and Virginia Tech senior attacker Ryan Rotanz were selected as the 2012 YRL Unsung Hero Award recipients. The award is given annually to one men's and one women's lacrosse player within the Atlantic Coast Conference for their dedication to leadership, for their community service, and for being a positive role model on and off the field.

The three students who share one of the biggest accomplishments in Baltimore County this year say they never sought to be perfect. They just tried to be present. Carly Ordak, Danielle Spyridakos and Renee Yusuff graduated Tuesday from Eastern Technical High School with perfect attendance records, having attended school every day from kindergarten through 12th grade. They were the only students in Baltimore County to graduate this year having done that. "I think this is an incredible accomplishment," said Tom Evans, principal of Eastern Tech.

They have asked a date, found the perfect dress, matched the shoes and made the appointments for hair and nails. But the seniors and their parents at Maryvale Preparatory School must add one more thing to their to-do list before prom night Friday. The all-girls Catholic school in Brooklandville established an unusual pre-prom tradition 26 years ago, when it made an alcohol education program mandatory for students and parents. "Because of all the things going on related to drinking, including a horrific accident, we decided then that we had to do something," said Sister Shawn Marie Maguire, who has overseen the school since 1981.

With a big assist from his father, Torrence White, 8, has no missed a day of school this year.Considering Torrence missed almost 50 days of school last year, his perfect attendance thus far is a really big deal for the third-grader and his family."

According to the annual Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. attendance survey, last year was another year of growth.The survey shows attendance at 15 major North American auto racing series increased by more than 800,000 spectators in 1990, surpassing 12 million for the first time.The professional series monitored by Goodyear are: NASCAR Winston Cup and Grand National stock cars; CART Indy-cars, NHRA and IHRA dragsters; World of Outlaws sprint cars; SCCA Trans-Am cars; IMSA GT Prototype and GT0-GTU sports cars; MTEG stadium off-road vehicles; ARCA stock cars; ACT stock cars; ASA stock cars; and NASCAR modified and Winston West stock cars.

WHEN CHRIS Mettee was in preschool, his mother set a goal for him: Jean Mettee decided that her son would graduate from high school with a perfect attendance record for his academic career. "I just think it's important that you go wherever it is you're supposed to go," she said. Chris, who will turn 18 this month, met the challenge. He recently graduated from a magnet program at Long Reach High School with a perfect attendance record. For his efforts, he received a certificate and a pen from the school.

Does the New York Racing Association deserve to hold the Breeders' Cup?That was the question many writers who covered the event were asking last week. Even though the facilities for the animals are excellent, the atmosphere for at least some humans is depressing.Low attendance at the Belmont track and lack of attention paid to racing's fall championship series by the New York media were among reasons cited by racing reporters for low morale.Many of them feel Churchill Downs in Kentucky and the Southern California and Florida tracks, where the Breeders' Cup is more of an event and there is an atmosphere of excitement, are far better locations.

Maryland, which recorded its first winning football season in five years and played in an expanded Byrd Stadium, had an increase of 13,159 fans per game last season, the highest increase in Division I, according to the College Football Association.The Terps' average attendance went from 28,962 in 1994 to 42,121 in 1995. Maryland had its largest single-game crowd in 10 years -- a sellout of 48,055 against West Virginia at Byrd Stadium, which has had more than $60 million in renovations over the past four years.

The Maryland State Fair that ended this week recorded its best attendance in years, a fair organizer said yesterday. Between the opening on Aug. 26 and its last day on Labor Day, 489,711 people passed through the fairground's gates, said Howard M. "Max" Mosner Jr., president and general manager of the fair and the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the Timonium fairgrounds. That's well above the 420,000 who attended the fair last year and the best attendance recorded since 1996, Mosner said.

Baltimore Police say up to 50,000 people have shown up at Pimlico for the Preakness Stakes. The department expects about 112,000 people to come to the event by the time this evening's big race has been run. If the race hits that mark, it would be one of the biggest crowds on record -- last year's attendance was reported at about 107,398, the sixth-largest of all time. The race has been recovering from a decline in attendance when race organizers decided in 2009 to eliminate the B.Y.O.B.

The largest crowd in Preakness Stakes history watched the thrilling victory of a horse that's now on a Triple Crown hunt, jammed to pop band Maroon 5 and basked under a Saturday sky whose only clouds were the wispy letters of an advertisement sprayed from a plane. Bettors in the Turfside Terrace, a massive white tent along the home stretch at Pimlico Race Course , watched anxiously as the 137th Preakness ended just as many had predicted - with Derby champ I'll Have Another and also-favored Bodemeister vying for the win. When I'll Have Another surged late to win by a nose - and continued his bid for what would be the first Triple Crown triumph since 1978 - they erupted into cheers, clutching their betting tickets and hugging.

It was a standing room only crowd April 20 at the Havre de Grace Activity Center for "Fair Housing in 2012: A Clear Path for All. " The training, free and open to the public, was the result of partnership and collaboration among the Harford County Department of Community Services Office of Human Relations, the Harford County Housing Agency and the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. "Havre de Grace was essentially the last stop on the Underground Railroad for many heading north," Harford County Executive David Craig said in a press release.

The first of the travel season's "go early, go late" advisories for the Bay Bridge is in effect this weekend as thousands of visitors head for Springfest 2012 in Ocean City . The Maryland Transportation Authority said motorists should avoid high traffic volume Thursday through Sunday by traveling to the annual spring block party during off-peak hours. If eastbound traffic conditions warrant it, the westbound span will operate with two-way traffic. The best times to travel this weekend are: Thursday before 2 p.m. and after 10 p.m.; Friday before 10 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; Saturday before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m.; Sunday before 11 a.m. and after 10 p.m. Officials note that full westbound bridge closures, with two-way traffic on the eastbound span, are scheduled during overnight hours Thursday, Friday and Saturday to accommodate maintenance work.

Donations from 2010 will be used to keep several city pools open this summer that the mayor last month had slated for closure. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced Friday that Baltimore City Foundation donations from two years ago will be used to keep all 13 neighborhood pools open for seven weeks, beginning June 23. "The council president has been advocating for increased funding for rec and parks for the entire time he's been on...

Et cetera Randallstown alum Womack is Houston-bound Former Randallstown basketball guard Tione Womack has signed with Houston. The former first-team All-Metro player, who led the Rams to two state titles, has spent the past two years at Hagerstown Community College. Womack averaged 10 points, 7.6 assists, 3.1 rebounds and 2.9steals as a sophomore. "Tione has a pass-first mentality that creates easy scoring opportunities for his teammates and is a quick, solid on-ball defender," Cougars coach James Dickey said in a news release.

Baltimore's pioneering school-privatization experiment stumbled once again over a statistical assessment of its success yesterday as new figures on how many children show up at nine Tesseract schools each day reveal only modest improvement in attendance.And on average, attendance gains at the Tesseract schools during the experiment's first two years fall below improvements made citywide.Release of the results came just eight days after the head of Education Alternatives Inc. (EAI) called attendance a key measure of the experiment's performance and touted dramatic gains.

Traditional baseball thinking dictates that won-lost record has a direct effect on home attendance.In the minor leagues, that is not necessarily true."

Laurel residents Thomas Smith, a student at Atholton High, and Alexandra Barrett, a student at Reservoir High, were among 250 individuals selected as National Youth Delegates to the Washington Youth Summit on the Environment, June 24-29 at George Mason University, in Virginia. They will represent Maryland and were chosen based on academic accomplishments and a demonstrated interest and excellence in leadership in the sciences and conservation studies.

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis has been subpoenaed as a defense witness in the trial of former Bengals linebacker Nate Webster, according to the Associated Press. Webster faces seven counts related to sexual conduct with the teen-aged daughter of an assistant coach in Cincinnati. He allegedly threatened the girl using guns to keep her from telling anyone; he'd apparently met her by asking her to babysit his children. The case is expected to last into next week. Webster, like Lewis, attended Miami.