Jump

The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association executive council voted on Thursday to use boys and girls basketball as a pilot in seeding the top four teams in each state region by record for the first time in the annual state tournament.The open tournament with its lottery draw began as a experiment with soccer and volleyball in 1994. The following year, the format was implemented for all sports.But Annapolis coach John Brady and Broadneck's Ken Kazmarek, among others, have been extremely vocal over the appearance of rewarding mediocrity when it was possible under the random draw for an 0-20 team to host a 20-0 team.

2 TO 4 YEARS OF AGE"All Kinds of Children," by Norma Simon. Illustrated by Diane Paterson. Albert Whitman & Co. 32 pages. $15.95.No matter how many children the world holds, no matter how unusual they may look or sound or seem, they all share many characteristics. After all, did you ever meet a child who didn't love to play? Didn't need food? Didn't want someone to love? This book celebrates difference and similarity in a reassuring way."Billy and the Big New School ," by Laurence Anholt.

Beginning today, a strip called "Jump Start" begins a one-month, Monday- through-Saturday run in place of "Non Sequitur" on The Sun's comics pages. "Jump Start," created by Robb Armstrong of Philadelphia, is about the daily lives of a middle-class African-American family. It currently appears in more than 400 newspapers."Non Sequitur," whose creator, Wiley, is taking a month off, returns to its usual spot in The Sun in September.

Robb Armstrong and his wife were in Baltimore earlier this year, just visiting, staying at the Marriott Inner Harbor, doing the crab thing. Then Armstrong, the 37-year-old cartoonist and creator of the strip "Jump Start," picked up The Sun. He wasn't in it."It broke my heart," says Armstrong, who has depicted its characters Joe and Marcy Cobb for more than a decade. The Cobbs, one of the first middle-class black couples to be featured in a nationally syndicated comic strip, now appear in 375 newspapers across the country.

Most people mistake Ryan Olkowski for a basketball player. At 6 feet 4, 150 pounds, he has the height and agility to play seriously, but doesn't anymore. This 19-year-old Penn State sophomore from Perry Hall uses his athleticism on the track instead.Last week, after six jumps, Olkowski claimed a silver medal in the long jump at the Junior Pan Am Games in Tampa, Fla. He captured second with a leap of 24 feet, 2 inches, but at a price: a swollen, bandaged leg after spiking himself earlier in the meet.

Mount St. Joseph, along with Calvert Hall toast of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association to date, knows how to get the most out of its athletes.The Gaels' leading point scorers are Cordis Stanfield and captain Dan Ramirez. They run four events in a meet, including relays, and usually earn points in each.In the first MIAA meet of the indoor season, Stanfield was second in the mile, third in the 600, fifth in the mile and tossed in a leg on the victorious 3,200-meter relay for good measure.

When the Fabulous Flying Fandinis moved in, the neighbors said they were strange."Strange house," said Mr. Smith."Strange pets," said Mr. Jones.Bobby Brown lived two doors down."

PHILADELPHIA -- Michael Weiss made history and stole the spotlight last night here at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. But he didn't quite land his biggest jump or his biggest prize.Weiss became the first male skater to attempt a quad Lutz at a major championship and, just as he did on his quad toe loop at last year's nationals, narrowly missed making a clean jump.This time, videotape replays weren't needed to see that Weiss two-footed the jump. But they were used anyway to just make sure.

HAKUBA, Japan -- It was the moment all Japan had waited for. The light snowfall had finally stopped. The sun began to peek through the milky-white sky. The crowd of 40,000 spectators crammed into a stadium tooted horns and waved tiny Rising Sun flags.And then, down a 120-meter ski jump came a man named Kazuyoshi Funaki.Funaki soared into the light wind and came down 142.5 meters later, an Olympic champion.The Japanese star who hails from a city that produces jumpers and whiskey, won the large hill jumping gold medal to ignite a raucous demonstration today.

HAKUBA, Japan -- Masahiko Harada adjusted his goggles, then his helmet. He was at the starting gate, the noise from the crowd rising to a crescendo, a sea of Japanese flags waving below.It was one of those Olympic moments that stays with you forever. A cloudless sky. A national holiday. A crowd of 45,000 waiting for the final jump, thousands more outside the venue, lining the streets, standing on the hills.Harada stood perfectly still, waiting, waiting. One jump to a gold medal. One jump to atone for his shocking failure in Lillehammer four years ago, when he cost Japan the team gold medal.

I live in Jarrettsville and traveled to Acapulco, Mexico in February. I had seen the cliff divers often on TV, but had no idea of the true scale of the diving venue. Not only is the height of the dive an issue, but the divers must jump into a narrow channel and time their jump so that they enter the water as an incoming wave has filled the channel. Divers must also climb the near vertical cliffs to prepare for the jump. Hitting the water causes stress on the retina of the eye and possible blindness, so divers are required to retire at age 30. The Baltimore Sun welcomes submissions for "My Best Shot."

It could well have been Howard County's Kangaroo Kids auditioning for television's "America's Got Talent" several weeks ago instead of a rival team from the Midwest. The Colorado-based precision rope jumpers waited 10 hours to perform on the popular summer program, but errors soon set off the dreaded triple buzzers from the judges. In less than a minute, they found themselves trooping back off the stage beneath three illuminated red X's, said local coach James McCleary. He commiserated with the other team's bad fortune as if his own team had been axed.

Terri Kieffer playfully taunted Alvin, her beloved 9-month-old yellow Lab, to jump into the pool ahead. "You want to get it?" the Emmitsburg resident shouted at her dog as she held up a blue chew toy. "Now get it!" she yelled as she flicked it into the pool. Alvin ran down the 40-foot dock and leaped a good 14 feet into the pool, making a gigantic splash. Several hundred onlookers clapped enthusiastically Sunday during the Dockdogs competition at the Harford County Farm Fair in Bel Air. Close to 200 dogs competed from Thursday to Sunday at Dockdogs, which is a track and field-like event for dogs.

Theodore David Jump, a retired Carroll County public school educator who used his struggle with bipolar disorder and alcoholism to counsel students and young adults, died of heart failure May 8 at Carroll Hospice's Dove House in Westminster. He was 74. Mr. Jump was born and raised in Little Rock, Ark., and graduated in 1952 from Central High School. After earning a bachelor's degree in the classics from Yale University in 1956, Mr. Jump began his teaching career at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa. While serving in the Army in the late 1950s, he began graduate studies at Emory University in Atlanta, and after being discharged in 1961, joined the faculty of the Severn School.

Woman killed in Fells Point A woman was fatally shot Sunday afternoon in Fells Point, police said. No arrest had been made. Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman, said the woman's name was being withheld pending family notification. Police responding to at least one shot fired in the 200 block of S. Broadway about 4:30 p.m. found the woman bleeding from at least one bullet wound. She was taken to the trauma center at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she died about 6:25 p.m., Harris said.

It appears the person who attacked Jeff Hardy before the Survivor Series is at it again. The burning question is: Who was driving the car that hit Hardy's vehicle? And did the same person jump Hardy from behind two months ago? ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts)

The hair on Jesse Jump's weather-beaten neck bristles when he hears the word "Annapolis." Mr. Jump and his buddies, sitting on the tailgates of their pickups parked next to their workboats in St. Michaels harbor, are talking about what had been a pretty good crabbing year - that is, until the new cutbacks hit in September. The smell of their bait is as strong as their comments about the Maryland and Virginia government regulations that have limited this year's catch of female blue crabs on the Chesapeake Bay and have banned winter dredging of crabs, long a staple of the industry in Virginia.

A 33-year-old West Baltimore woman was killed in an early-morning fire yesterday that engulfed a two-story home, while two children escaped by jumping two floors into the arms of a man. City firefighters were alerted to the one-alarm fire in the 1900 block of Fulton Ave. at 5:06 a.m., said Capt. Roman Clark. Clark said the cause of the fire is under investigation. Lakesha Lynch was pronounced dead at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Clark said witnesses told firefighters that an unknown man urged an 8-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy to jump from a second-story window.

You can have your superhero movies. I met a man who could fly without a cape. "It's been a long time since I've been in Baltimore. I jumped here once. Can't remember where exactly." Bob Beamon paused, snapped out of his internal time-traveling by a sudden realization. He slapped me lightly on the shoulder as he laughed. "You weren't even born when I was jumping, were you?" No, I sheepishly admitted. But I sure wish I had been. Bob Beamon defines Olympic greatness the way Bill Shakespeare defines Elizabethan literature.

In August, my family and I traveled to Maine, the state where I grew up, to visit the home of a friend who lives on Long Island, one of a series of islands near Portland in Casco Bay. At high tide, it is fun to jump from the upper part of this dock into the frigid waters. This is a picture of my daughter Kelsey jumping in. In the background is Hope Island, and beyond that Cliff Island, and the water is Luckse Sound. I thought this picture captured the essence of what I remember summers to be. Dan Lessard, Chestertown The Sun welcomes submissions for "My Best Shot."