Glenelg Country School

The world of amateur sports forces athletes and their parents to make a number of difficult choices. Tough questions never seem to end: Should an athlete focus on one sport, and if so, should it be the one he's best at, or the one he likes the most? Should he travel long distances to participate in youth-league competition to play on the best team possible? Should he switch from a high school with a high-powered sports team that plays in an elite-level conference to a school with a better academic reputation, but lesser athletic program?

Glenelg Country School field hockey coaches Barbara Wolf and Patti Ordonez know winning is a state of mind. Now, if they could just convince their players.Early in the season, Wolf and Ordonez thought they had enough talent to boost last year's one-win season and move up in the Association of Independent Schools B Division.Instead, after Wednesday's heart-breaking 3-2 loss to Lutheran, Glenelg's record stood at 1-5-2 overall and 0-4-1 in the B Division.That does not mean the talent is not there, say the coaches.

Eric Greenberg foiled Beth Tfiloh's plans of holding the ball for the last shot by making a steal at mid-court and following it with a layup with 25 seconds left to give visiting Glenelg Country School a 42-40 victory over the Warriors in a Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association C Conference semifinal yesterday.Glenelg Country School (19-4) will play Friends Saturday at Villa Julie in the title game. The Quakers upset Park, 61-60, in the other semifinal yesterday. Park had won Division I of the C Conference and Beth Tfiloh captured Division II while the Dragons and Friends were the runners-up.

Just before the holidays at the close of last year, the pre-kindergarten through first-graders at Glenelg Country School made a short trip. They walked from their school building to another nearby - but it was a journey of high excitement and expectation. On that day, the children at the private school in Glenelg had their first look inside their new building. The children and staff moved into the state-of-the-art facility in early January, but its official dedication took place March 13 Headmaster Ryland O. Chapman III recalled that first visit.

John T. "Jack" Mason Jr., a machine salesman who helped found Glenelg Country School, died of complications from dementia Monday at his family's farm in Ellicott City. He was 87. In 1936, Mr. Mason and other YMCA members from his hometown of Wilmington, Del., traveled to the Olympic Games in Germany, said his son John "Tenney" Mason of Sykesville. The YMCA group refused to salute when Adolf Hitler addressed the crowd. They were promptly arrested and jailed for a few hours before diplomats were able to free them.

Ask Carol Lehan, and she'll tell you that she loves two things: Shakespeare and the outdoors. These passions have given birth to Howard County's first Shakespeare Festival, featuring free outdoor performances of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" tonight through Sunday at Glenelg Country School's Commencement Gardens. The performances, by a troupe sponsored by the Olney Theater Center in Montgomery County, are expected to draw a crowd of 500. "The carefully manicured garden made up of boxwood trees, geometrically arranged to create a sense of balance, and the 4-feet-high stone wall which creates the stage ... this locale screamed at me - `Shakespeare!

All the world's a stage, according to Shakespeare, but Glenelg Country School's world has gotten a little cramped for both theatrics and education.So the 41-year-old college preparatory school -- off Folly Quarter Road at Maryvale Court -- is seeking county approval of plans for a new building that will include a 350-seat performing arts center and a new middle school.The private school must rent space at such places as Slayton House in Columbia's Wilde Lake village as a venue for the major play it puts on each year, said Henry C. Miller, chairman of the school's campaign to raise funds to build the new facility.

Glenelg Country School's Bernie Dennison likes being a big fish in a little pond.Through Glenelg Country's first seven games, the 6-foot-5, 230-pound senior center was leading the Baltimore metropolitan area in scoring and rebounding.He had scored 189 points for a 27.0 average and had grabbed 132 rebounds for an 18.8 average.Last season, his first at Glenelg Country, he averaged 26 points and 16.8 rebounds."I like Glenelg Country," he said. "It's an opportunity to make an impact. It feels real good to be the leading scorer in the area."

The audience eagerly scans the stage for clues: a raised, malevolent eyebrow; a sneer where there should be a smile; a pair of suspicious, if bumbling, stonemasons. None of these pieces seems to add up; the characters are not who they seem; and no one in the audience can agree on the murderer. That's just fine, however, in Glenelg Country School's production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, as the excitement, confusion and intrigue are the elements that give the play its charm. The Mystery of Edwin Drood is based on a novel by Charles Dickens, who died before he could finish it and reveal the murderer's identity.

Danny Walker's childhood environment is shaping his destiny, leading him to put out fires -- both real ones and the figurative ones that occur on lacrosse fields. He's Glenelg Country School's goalkeeper, the grandson of a Baltimore City fire captain and a recently accepted member of the Ellicott City Volunteer Fire Department on Route 103. "As a little kid, I used to go to my grandfather's firefighter reunions and I was always fascinated by the fire engines and the stories he used to tell me," said Walker, a 5-foot-11, 195-pound junior.