Field

In 31 days, two teams will meet in Philadelphia for the men's lacrosse national championship. Who that will be is anyone's guess. With unparalleled parity in the sport, the race is wide-open. This weekend, the best slate of the season, will go a long way toward winnowing the field. Some teams, such as Johns Hopkins and Colgate, need a win to keep their NCAA tournament hopes alive. Others, like defending national champion Loyola and Syracuse, want to burnish their resume. These seven games will go a long way toward deciding who will have a shot at Championship Weekend.

An Anne Arundel County judge handed the Key School a victory Tuesday, allowing the 55-year-old Annapolis private school to go ahead with plans to turn the 70-acre Annapolis Golf Club into an outdoor campus for athletics. A request by residents of the surrounding Annapolis Roads community to block the proposed landscape of playing fields, tennis courts, parking lot and a maintenance facility was turned down by Circuit Judge Paul G. Goetzke. An appeal, however, is possible. "This is an important day for us," said Marcella Yedid, head of the school, noting that the school has been working with Anne Arundel County on the site plan.

Graduation depleted Goucher of four starters - three on offense - and the program eventually bid farewell to the most successful coach in its history, but that did not prevent the team from extending its success in the Landmark Conference. Saturday's 7-6 overtime decision over Scranton cemented for the Gophers (7-7 overall and 5-0 in the league) the top seed and home-field advantage in the upcoming conference tournament with just one more league game against the Merchant Marine this Saturday.

Imagine you are a benevolent monarch and you have the power to institute a sales tax. (Even benevolent government has to be financed, after all.) Would you set one up that gave preference to sellers located outside your kingdom and penalized your own subjects? Would you go further and discourage those outsiders from even setting up shop in your country? Of course you wouldn't. That would be crazy. And while there are plenty of examples of insane heads of state, they aren't usually beloved by their people.

Alan D. Hecht, a retired insurance executive active in his industry for more than six decades who was also a national leader in his field, died of congestive heart failure April 2 at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and hospital. The Pikesville resident was 94. Born in Baltimore, he was the son of Lee I. Hecht, an attorney and judge of the old Appeals Tax Court of Baltimore, and Miriam Dannenberg Hecht, a homemaker. Raised on Bateman Avenue, he was a 1936 graduate of Forest Park High School, where he was editor of the yearbook.

Saint Agnes Hospital and the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation said Friday that they have raised $1.4 million to renovate the baseball field of the former Cardinal Gibbons School, preserving a site where Babe Ruth once played. The hospital, meanwhile, is firming up plans to add homes and offices around the field, on the campus of the Catholic school that closed in 2010. Saint Agnes plans to break ground on the baseball field within the next year, launching what officials have envisioned as Gibbons Commons, a mixed-use development on Caton Avenue, across the street from the hospital.

The senior led the No. 4 Lions to a second-place finish - one point behind No. 2 Milford Mill and three points ahead of No. 1 McDonogh - at the Pikesville Track Classic on Saturday. London established a meet record in the 100 hurdles with a time of 14.34 seconds, won the 300 hurdles (44.53) by more than two seconds and also ran on Howard's winning 400 relay team. Her times in both individual events are the best in the state so far this spring. Next week, London is scheduled to run in the 400 hurdles at the prestigious Penn Relays in Philadelphia.

Reigning national champion Salisbury was rewarded for Saturday's 15-4 rout of St. Mary's with the program's 17th Capital Athletic Conference regular-season title. The Seahawks (1993-94) and Stevenson (2009 and 2011) are the only other teams that have captured league championships, and the Sea Gulls (13-3 overall and 6-0 in the conference) assured themselves of the top seed and home-field advantage throughout the tournament. But Salisbury will not know its semifinal opponent until the upcoming weekend.

The Northeastern Maryland Kennel Club, Inc. offers a $3,000 scholarship for the first place applicant toward the field of animal sciences. Qualified scholarship applications are taken through June 1 and reviewed by the Scholarship Committee. The winner will be announced by Aug. 1. The scholarship is generally awarded by the second week of August. If interested in receiving a scholarship application and a copy of the guidelines, please contact Norma Skillman, scholarship chair, at 410-273-7996.