Ivy League

Americans think we live in a meritocracy where hard work can take you from rags to riches. Access to a great education can be an escape from the cyclical poverty found in Baltimore and other major cites. Attending an elite university is particularly helpful. Studies show that graduates of elite institutions - and Ivy League schools in particular - are more successful than graduates from other institutions. Admission into the Ivy League and other top schools is also considered to be meritocratic.

Despite being the top seed in the Ivy League tournament, Cornell was stunned, 14-13, in overtime by No. 12 Princeton. That result cost the Big Red one of the eight seeds in the NCAA tournament and the right to host a home game in the first round. No. 2 Cornell (12-3) will visit No. 11 and sixth-seeded Maryland (10-3) at Byrd Stadium in College Park this Sunday, but Terps coach John Tillman is not as concerned about the Big Red's last outing as he is about that team's entire season.

This is a big week for the Brown lacrosse team, ranked No. 4 in The Sun's poll, and coach Dom Starsia says his team is raring to go.The Bruins (6-0), who were off last week, play at home against Yale tomorrow and at No. 2 Princeton on Saturday in a pair of key Ivy League games. Brown and No. 1 North Carolina (7-0) are the only remaining unbeaten Division I teams."We were on the road for a pair of tough, physical games with Loyola and Massachusetts, and we needed the week off to get healthy again," Starsia said.

Sam Snow scored the game-winner with 56 seconds left in overtime as the visiting Fairfield men's lacrosse team upset top-ranked Denver, 10-9, Saturday in front of an announced 2,520 at Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium. The Stags (8-5, 4-2 Eastern College Athletic Conference) recorded the program's first win over a No. 1 team. The victory gives the Stags a spot in the ECAC championship May 2-4 at Hobart. Denver fell to 10-3 overall and 5-1 in league play. Michael Roe won the opening faceoff of overtime and Fairfield called a timeout.

When does a Princeton degree work against you? When you're playing in the International Basketball League, and your teammates and opponents are more desperate than you to survive.Steve Goodrich wants to play in the NBA, just like every other member of the BayRunners. But he's actually at a competitive disadvantage, knowing that if he gets turned out on the street, it probably will be Wall Street."You can't approach it like, `I had a bad day today. Maybe I should go call Merrill Lynch and get out of here,' " Goodrich said before scoring nine points and grabbing seven rebounds last night in the BayRunners' 82-72 loss to Trenton.

There was an unyielding, distinctive way the Ivy League went about conducting and supervising athletics, a noble attitude worthy of respect, applause and emulation. Two tenets of the philosophy concerned football: Freshmen were not eligible to participate at the varsity level and spring practice for the sport wasn't permitted.The Ivy League had the right idea. It endeavored to keep football in perspective and by establishing its own sets of rules, within the framework of the NCAA, made you feel this was the way sports were intended to be. A purity that the others, such as Notre Dame, Michigan, Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia Tech, Duke and Penn State, could not claim or remotely attain.

Phoebe S. Leboy did not set out to change the academi world when she joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in 1967. She was a young scientist eager to become a full professor of biochemistry because it was one measure of achievement in her field, even if it was a position no woman had ever held at the school.Today, Dr. Leboy is chairman of the dental school's department of biochemistry, a faculty member for a quarter of a century and the only female professor the dental school has ever had.Eight other women are on the 51-member faculty of the school, but none is a full professor.

THERE is a popular myth that the Ivy League is the last bastion of the wealthy elite. In fact, between 40 percent and 50 percent of undergraduate students in the eight Ivy League schools are exceptionally bright, able young people whose pocketbooks cannot keep pace with their SAT scores. For example, 50 percent of the first-year class at Columbia University in New York received financial aid.The erroneous image of the Ivy Leaguer has done much to restrain the potential of America's young achievers.

It's an academic version of March Madness: top seniors at Baltimore area high schools circling the mailbox and praying for good news -- letters of admission to colleges such as Harvard and Princeton.But a handful of the best students are spared the "senior sweats." Those high achievers get early acceptance to prestigious colleges. Some also become finalists in the National Merit Scholarship competition, an honor earned by one in 200 Maryland seniors.They are students such as Jessie Rosenberg of the Park School and Josh Salcman of Friends School, who have just learned of their selection as National Merit finalists.

Erica McCauley did not envision herself as an Ivy League college student. But after leading Mount Hebron's girls basketball team one more time this season, she will become one next year.McCauley, one of the top guards to play at Hebron, will attend the University of Pennsylvania on a partial scholarship.Ivy League schools do not grant athletic scholarships. McCauley, who maintains a 3.8 grade-point average and plans to study broadcast journalism, will play point guard for Penn.Penn coach Julie Soriero could not be reached for comment.

Shannon Mangini scored her third goal of the game with 2:16 left in overtime to give host Pennsylvania a 10-9 win over No. 13 Princeton and clinch at least a share of a seventh consecutive Ivy League women's lacrosse championship on Wednesday. The Quakers (8-4, 6-0 Ivy League), who earned the right to host the league tournament, did not lead until there was 21:29 to play in the game, and led again only after Mangini's winning goal. The game never featured a lead of more than two goals and was tied five times.

Yale's recent success - an 8-2 record and the No. 14 spot in The Sun's rankings - should not be that shocking considering that the program earned a share of the Ivy League regular-season championship in 2010 and captured the conference tournament last year to advance to the NCAA tournament. The Bulldogs' emergence is certainly not a surprise to Maryland coach John Tillman, who occupied the same position at Harvard - an Ivy League rival of Yale's - from 2008 to 2010. Tillman, whose No. 6 Terps (8-2)

North Carolina senior midfielder Davey Emala (Gilman) and Maryland sophomore attackman Jay Carlson (St. Paul's) were named Atlantic Coast Conference men's lacrosse Co-Offensive Players of the Week, as announced Tuesday by the conference, while Terps goalkeeper Niko Amato was recognized as the Defensive Player of the Week. Emala scored on all three of his shots and had one caused turnover in North Carolina's 11-10 overtime win over then-No. 12 Johns Hopkins on Saturday.

The No. 8 Notre Dame men's lacrosse team trailed No. 3 Denver by two goals with less than two minutes left to play in the Whitman's Sampler Mile High Classic on Saturday night. The Fighting Irish (4-1) scored twice over the final 1 minute, 42 seconds to force overtime and Jim Marlatt (River Hill) netted the game-winner 1:09 into overtime as Notre Dame won, 13-12. The host Pioneers (5-2) took a 12-10 lead with 2:25 left in the game when Eric Law registered his fourth goal of the day on a 30-second man-up opportunity.

Americans think we live in a meritocracy where hard work can take you from rags to riches. Access to a great education can be an escape from the cyclical poverty found in Baltimore and other major cites. Attending an elite university is particularly helpful. Studies show that graduates of elite institutions - and Ivy League schools in particular - are more successful than graduates from other institutions. Admission into the Ivy League and other top schools is also considered to be meritocratic.

As a defensive tackle, Poly coach Larry Webster experienced full-contact practice almost every day of his 20-year playing career, usually twice a day. It wouldn't be easy for the former Raven to adjust to coaching a football team that could soon be limited to hitting live only once or twice a week during the regular season, one of the steps being considered by a Maryland State Department of Education task force studying ways to prevent concussions in...

How did senior midfielder Galen Beers go from the backroads of high school lacrosse to a major collegiate lacrosse school that has climbed back into the NCAA championship picture? Certainly no self-respecting big-time college coach ever finds his way to little North Harford High or Kent County High on the Eastern Shore, where Beers played. So Beers went to the Top 205 Camp at Loyola College four years ago and was discovered by then-Cornell University assistant Jeff Tambroni, who is now the Big Red head coach.

COLLEGE PARK -- Although the four teams in the women's Division I lacrosse semifinals have 16 Final Four appearances among them in the past six years, neither of this year's matchups has occurred in nearly a decade.So the national semifinals at Byrd Stadium have been dubbed the Atlantic Coast Conference-Ivy League Challenge.Virginia and Maryland, the only ACC schools with women's lacrosse and the tournament's two top seeds, square off against Ivy League members Princeton and Harvard. Today, the top-ranked Cavaliers (13-1)

Matt Gibson, Yale Senior, Point Lookout, N.Y., attackman Gibson powered the Bulldogs to their first NCAA tournament appearance since 1992 by leading them to the Ivy League tournament title. The 5-foot-10, 175-pound attackman racked up 14 points in victories over Cornell and Princeton in the tournament. Gibson recorded eight assists in Yale's 14-10 defeat of the Big Red in the semifinals, which tied the single-game school record for assists set by Jason O'Neill in 1990.