Competition

Century High School, located at 355 Ronsdale Road, Sykesville, will host its ninth annual Century Idol show and competition on Saturday, Feb. 25, beginning at 7 p.m. in the school auditorium. The event is a talent show, where five finalists will compete for the title of Century Idol. The competitors are Julia Szekely, a 10th-grader at the school; Tay Jacobe, also a 10th-grader; Ashley Barr, an 11th-grader; Maggie Neal, a ninth-grader; and 12th-grader Christina Antolick. Admission is $9, or $8 with a canned food donation.

When Cory Redding left the Ravens to join former defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano with the Indianapolis Colts, conventional wisdom suggested that Pernell McPhee and Arthur Jones would be competing for the right to be the starting defensive end. But then McPhee underwent minor knee surgery in the summer and wasn't removed from the team's physically-unable-to-perform list until Aug. 1. The following day, Jones was sidelined by a hip flexor injury...

With a passion for constitutional questions that bubbles just below the surface, a group of mostly foreign-born students from Randallstown High School beat out teams from schools in Montgomery, Washington and Charles counties for a chance to represent Maryland at a national social studies contest. Perhaps it is because they come mostly from Nigeria, Liberia, Grenada and Egypt, countries that have all seen political turmoil, that these students, with the help of their teacher, have turned the new experiences of living in a democracy into a quest to win the We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution National Finals to be held in Washington this weekend.

Bryan McCann served as the primary kick returner in the Ravens' 29-14 win against the Houston Texans Sunday, amassing 53 yards on two returns. But David Reed, who had assumed that role for a good portion of last season, said he is no longer bothered by the left shoulder strain that had shelved him for three weeks. So which one has taken the lead in the kick return competition as described by coach John Harbaugh? Jerry Rosburg isn't saying. “It's exactly what it is. It's a kick return competition,” the special teams coordinator said Friday.

It looked doubtful that the entire group of 40 third-, fourth- and fifth-grade girls from Baltimore City's Edgewood Elementary would complete a mile run when they took the track last spring. One girl vomited. Other girls wiped away tears as they began to get muscle cramps midway through. But each girl finished. "It wasn't pretty," recalled Kaitlin Loftus, a math teacher at the school who trained the girls to get them prepared for the challenge. "But each girl wanted to complete the run. " She added: "It was amazing.

Kevin Marshall and Buddy Evans, like many cousins, are close. They keep in touch regularly and enjoy talking over a cup of coffee when they can get together. The two, who have spent much of their lives on the Chesapeake Bay as watermen, even took their cordial relationship to land to play in a softball league together. But when the 41st annual Crisfield Boat Docking Classic takes place Sept. 2, none of that will matter. Asked whether they were on the same team, Evans laughed at the thought.

Clare Mueller, a soprano from Bernardsville, N.J., won the 30th vocal competition of the Baltimore Opera Competition Saturday night in Friedberg Hall at the Peabody Conservatory. Along with the $10,000 in prize money and contract support that came with first prize, Miss Mueller won an extra $1,000 as the Audience Award winner -- one of the few times in the competition's history that the vote of the judges has coincided with that of the audience.The other six prize winners were : soprano Lisa Erickson of Philadelphia, who won $4,500; bass Eric Owens of Philadelphia, who won $4,000; soprano Kimberly Jones of Chicago, who won $4,000; mezzo-soprano Amy Johnson of Doylestown, Pa., who won $2,000; tenor Christopher Petrucelli of New York, who won $1,000; and tenor Raul Mello of Miami, who won $500.

Bass fishing is taking a page from the NFL's playbook for kids and will hold a CastingKids competition early next month that is a takeoff on the punt, pass and kick contests.The Bassmaster BP CastingKids Exhibition, which is a pilot project for a national competition this fall, is open to youngsters in two age groups, from 7-10 and 11-14. The challenge is to flip, pitch and cast a lure at a 12-inch target at distances of 10, 20 and 30 feet.Scoring is based on a point system, with the highest points determining the winner.

A LANDMARK federal telecommunications law passed in 1996 promised many benefits for consumers, including more companies competing for their business.But the promises of that law have not been fulfilled as the road to competition has been blocked by the Baby Bells, those regional phone companies formed in the breakup of AT&T's Bell System.As a result, Marylanders must still place virtually all their local calls through one company, Bell Atlantic Corp., which has 95 percent of the business market and nearly all of the residential market for local phone service, according to Maryland's Office of People's Counsel.

Maryland's Public Service Commission has ended Bell Atlantic Corp.'s monopoly in the local telephone market.In a ruling released late yesterday, the commission gave the green light for MFS Intellinet of Maryland to offer local exchange services to business customers in competition with the former C&P Telephone Co. of Maryland.The ruling doesn't directly affect local residential services, but the MFS decision sent a strong signal that the PSC would be sympathetic to any carrier that wanted to compete with Bell Atlantic Maryland for that business.