Landover

LANDOVER - The Oakland Mills boys indoor track team won the mile sprint medley with a time of 3 minutes, 33.38 seconds at the Nike National Meet yesterday at the Prince George's Sports & Learning Complex. The winning Scorpions team was composed of sophomore Tony Cole and seniors Chris Barksdale, Ishmael Josiah and Izudin Mehmedovic.

LANDOVER -- The door of opportunity slammed shut on the Washington Redskins' turnaround season yesterday. Faint hope may yet exist, but the Redskins surrendered any realistic chance to salvage a playoff berth this year with a brutal, 20-6 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles at FedEx Field. Undone by their mistakes and an anemic offense, the Redskins turned in a woeful effort with their second straight home loss. They committed critical turnovers inside the Philadelphia 20-yard line, dropped eight passes and converted only three of 14 third downs.

LANDOVER - A 20-year-old Landover man was shot and critically wounded yesterday by Prince George's County police after he allegedly opened fire on two officers. Police say the officers responded to a call of a man with a gun in the 3400 block of Dodge Park Road around 6:35 p.m. A man standing in a parking lot there fired, police said, and the officers returned fire, hitting the suspect in the head and abdomen. The suspect, identified by police as James Anthony Williams, was taken to Prince George's Hospital Center, where he was in critical condition last night.

LANDOVER - An overflow crowd at yesterday's state indoor track championships at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex forced officials to put out "sold out" signs. "The fire marshall directed us to close down for a period of time," said Ned Sparks, Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association executive director. "But everybody did get in eventually." The field house holds 3,500, but by early afternoon the facility was wall-to-wall people. It was the first time the state held its indoor championship for all three classifications on the same day under one roof.

WASHINGTON - A group led by Baltimore-Washington soccer stalwart Lincoln Phillips has been granted a franchise in the under-23 Premier Development League, American soccer's equivalent of Single-A baseball. Chesapeake United, with a roster of unpaid, college-age players, will compete out of Landover in Prince George's County in the 46-team PDL's Northeast Division. Opponents are to include two New York City teams, two in New Jersey, and others in Westchester County, N.Y., and Vermont, and on Cape Cod, Mass.

Scouting report Ravens rushing vs. Redskins run defense REDSKINS Under new defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes, the Redskins' rush defense has risen from 27th in the NFL a year ago to eighth this season. The Redskins are giving up just 95.2 yards a game and 4.0 a carry. DTs Dana Stubblefield and Dan Wilkinson are good run defenders, and MLB Derek Smith is second on the team with 46 tackles. The Ravens rank eighth in rush offense. They will play without C Jeff Mitchell (ankle), but should have LT Jonathan Ogden back.

International food company Royal Ahold NV reported a 31.5 percent jump in first-quarter profit yesterday and attributed much of its U.S. sales growth to the performance of Giant Food Inc. of Landover. Net earnings surged to $220 million in the quarter that ended April 23, up from $168.4 million in the corresponding period a year earlier. Earnings per common share rose 30.8 percent to 34 cents per share. Operating results increased 30.8 percent to $434.9 million, up from $332.5 million in the first quarter of 1999, the company said.

LANDOVER -- The Detroit Lions spoiled Gus Frerotte's homecoming yesterday by playing like a homecoming patsy. The Lions self-destructed early and often, making it easy for the Washington Redskins to cruise to a 27-13 victory in an NFC wild-card game before 79,411 at FedEx Field. The victory sends the Redskins to Tampa Bay next Saturday, when they'll play the Buccaneers in the second round and find out whether they were as good as they looked yesterday. Stephen Davis, who ran 12 times for 51 yards in the 33-17 loss to the Lions in Detroit a month ago, gained 119 yards on 15 carries on a sore ankle before leaving with a sprained knee in the second quarter.

RALJON -- This hamlet of 81,000 part-time inhabitants will disappear next week, peeled from local history like an old decal from a car window.The neighbors say good riddance.Daniel Snyder, new owner of the Washington Redskins football team, is restoring Raljon to Landover.Born in the spring of 1996 on 200 acres of Prince George's County farmland next to the Capital Beltway, Raljon was the football kingdom of Jack Kent Cooke, the mercurial and powerful owner of the Redskins. He stitched together the names of sons Ralph and John in naming the turf beneath his stadium and the vast expanses of blacktop surrounding it.The U.S. Postal Service even bestowed its blessing -- not only accepting the name Raljon, but granting Cooke's request for an exclusive four-digit extension to the Landover ZIP code.

LANDOVER -- Hundreds of cameras flashed moments after the final whistle sounded, the crowd of 54,642 rising on this muggy, magical night. Several German players collapsed to the field in dejection. The American players sprinted toward each other, raising their arms in exultation, embracing.It's a brave new world. It's a big new world. It's a world not just for fathers and sons, but mothers and daughters, a world that once seemed so implausible, but now is as real as the pain in Michelle Akers' shoulder or the relief on Brandi Chastain's face.