Peat

Sherry Stick has been to racetracks since her parents took their then 3-year-old daughter to one near the family's Delaware home. Going to Pimlico Race Course for the Preakness has been a regular activity for Stick since she graduated Salisbury in 2000 and moved to the Baltimore area. Stick was an accomplished middle- and long-distance runner in track and cross country in college, breaking the school record in the 800 meters and eventually being inducted into Salisbury's Athletic Hall of Fame.

Colleges UMES bid for bowling three-peat falls short UMES' bid to become the first women's bowling team to win three straight titles ended in the semifinals of the NCAA championships late Friday night in Canton, Mich. Vanderbilt eliminated the Hawks, 4-3, to advance to Saturday's championship match, which it lost to Nebraska. The Commodores won the seventh game against UMES, 212-211. The Hawks needed a strike on their final ball to tie the score, but senior star T'nia Falbo rolled a nine, leaving the 10-pin upright.

For the second time in about a month, the managing partner of a major Baltimore accounting firm has been promoted to the top position in his company's Philadelphia office.D. Keith Cobb will be leaving KPMG Peat Marwick's 250-person Baltimore operation sometime in midsummer, he said yesterday."I will be assuming the responsibilities of managing partner of the Philadelphia office," said Mr. Cobb, who also has overall responsibility for Baltimore and Washington and three offices in Virginia.

Sherry Stick has been to racetracks since her parents took their then 3-year-old daughter to one near the family's Delaware home. Going to Pimlico Race Course for the Preakness has been a regular activity for Stick since she graduated Salisbury in 2000 and moved to the Baltimore area. Stick was an accomplished middle- and long-distance runner in track and cross country in college, breaking the school record in the 800 meters and eventually being inducted into Salisbury's Athletic Hall of Fame.

DETROIT -- Now that the "three-peat" issue is deader than a shredded piston ring, it is perhaps historically significant to remember the last time such extended professional basketball supremacy was realized.It was the spring of 1966, when the Boston Celtics, in the seventh game of a best-of-seven championship series, beat the Los Angeles Lakers for their eighth consecutive NBA title.Back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back.Pat Riley coined the annoying three-peat term while he was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers in their recent quest for a set of triple National Basketball Association crowns, which Detroit ruined with its first title.

DETROIT --Turning corn into fuel is all the rage. But a team of Detroit area researchers has identified a potentially cheaper and more Earth-friendly fuel: peat, the half-rotted vegetation that covers a large part of Michigan. The scientists, from the University of Detroit-Mercy and Wayne State University, are working to develop what they call "pethanol" to run small, fuel-cell-powered vehicles such as golf carts and riding mowers. Because peat forms naturally and requires no fertilization, it's a benefit over corn, the researchers say. And swampy Michigan has one of nation's largest peat reserves.

Donald Joseph Zeman, a retired managing partner in the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., died of a heart attack Friday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Timonium resident was 71. Mr. Zeman was born and raised in Northeast Baltimore and graduated from City College in 1949. He held various jobs before enlisting in the Army in 1950 and serving in Korea. After earning a bachelor's degree in accounting from Loyola College in 1959, he joined Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., now KPMG Peat Marwick.

ARCADIA, Calif. -- Maybe it wasn't business that took Kent Desormeaux to Belmont Park on Saturday. Maybe he was just showing his fellow Santa Anita jockeys a little mercy.Desormeaux missed two Santa Anita stakes that afternoon, and those are the only stakes he didn't win in the opening, six-day week of the Oak Tree Racing Association season.Yesterday, the 22-year-old jockey ran his stakes record to 4-for-4 by whipping Gray Slewpy to a neck victory over 25-1 Trick Me in the Ancient Title Breeders' Cup Handicap, which featured four Breeders' Cup Sprint hopefuls.

North Dakota is calling me. "Come on up!" it says. And then it adds: "Bring thermal underwear!" This invitation resulted from a column in which I poked fun at North Dakota for wanting to drop the word "North" from its name, so that people will stop thinking of it as a cold, frigid, freezing, subzero, arctic, polar, wintry place characterized by low temperatures. My column also made fun of Grand Forks, N.D., and East Grand Forks, Minn., for marketing themselves as "The Grand Cities" and proclaiming that they are "where the earth meets the sky."

HARTFORD, Conn. -- The New England Patriots could generate enough revenue in Connecticut to justify the state's spending $252 million on a 70,000-seat stadium to attract the NFL team to Hartford, an economic consultant concluded yesterday.An 88-page report by KPMG Peat Marwick found that metropolitan Hartford compares favorably in population and household income to cities that are home to some of the NFL's most successful franchises.The region within 25 miles of the stadium site -- the primary market for most NFL teams -- would rank Hartford eighth in population and fourth in average household income among 10 teams with the best attendance records.

Just for fun, try a Google search using the terms "Talladega" and "Big One. " You get about 195,000 hits. Talladega, site of the next NASCAR pit stop Sunday, is notorious for its parade of bumper cars flying through the air. The unpredictability factor is part of the suspense. A driver could be having a great day, and next thing he knows, he is airborne, with any chance of winning going up in the air as well. With only six points separating Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin in the Chase standings, the possibility of a Big One completely wrecking either guy's shot at a championship looms heavily.

If Phil's back, LA rolls Josh Robbins Orlando Sentinel Get ready for a three-peat, Los Angeles. The Lakers should be considered the favorites to win a third consecutive NBA title next June as long as Phil Jackson returns as head coach. The nucleus of Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum, Lamar Odom and Ron Artest is under contract for the 2010-11 season. Bynum should be healthy. Even if Derek Fisher retires, Mitch Kupchak should be able to find a point guard to fill the void.

Six area wrestlers finished second at the National Prep Wrestling Tournament at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., yesterday. Among them was St. Paul's freshman Eric Friedman at 103 pounds, who lost in overtime in his first national final, and Mount St. Joseph senior Curtis Holmes, who lost in sudden death after five overtime periods failed to decide his 145-pound match. "Curtis lost in a rideout," McDonogh coach Pete Welch said of the 2-1 match that went to Justin Martinez of Wyoming Seminary.

When Kevin Costner told an interviewer that the writers of his serial-killer thriller Mr. Brooks presented it to him as a potential trilogy, warning lights should have flashed for him and everyone else. Was that why the already-bloated film floated the suggestion that serial killing could be hereditary? Did the filmmakers envision a Daughter of Mr. Brooks down the line? The success of the Star Wars movies and The Lord of the Rings films have roused trilogy-mania among Hollywood moviemakers.

DETROIT --Turning corn into fuel is all the rage. But a team of Detroit area researchers has identified a potentially cheaper and more Earth-friendly fuel: peat, the half-rotted vegetation that covers a large part of Michigan. The scientists, from the University of Detroit-Mercy and Wayne State University, are working to develop what they call "pethanol" to run small, fuel-cell-powered vehicles such as golf carts and riding mowers. Because peat forms naturally and requires no fertilization, it's a benefit over corn, the researchers say. And swampy Michigan has one of nation's largest peat reserves.

Annika Sorenstam started an early victory lap as she headed to the back nine at Bulle Rock Golf Course yesterday, a total of 12-under-par on her scorecard and a five-stroke lead on the field at the $1.8 million McDonald's LPGA Championship. After a brief swerve during which the 34-year-old Swede's lead was reduced to three strokes, Sorenstam regained her footing on the route -- or rout -- she was taking toward the ninth major championship of her career. As a result, Sorenstam will head into today's final round with a five-stroke lead over Young Kim of South Korea.

The Wichita Wings might have considered it a moral victory. But they didn't. And the Baltimore Blast might have been unhappy with a 7-6 victory against a team playing without its only true goalkeeper. But it wasn't."We should have won this game," said Wings defender Kim Roentved. "This was a great chance for us to show we could play our way through adversity."Said Blast defender Iain Fraser: "We've been on the other side in dodgy games like this that we should have won and didn't. We knew this would be a tough game.

County Comptroller Eugene Curfman had two pieces of bad news for the County Commissioners yesterday when discussing his $1.6 million operating budget request for the coming fiscal year.The county soon may have to switch to a new bank that could charge higher rates to guarantee the county's investments, Curfman said.NationsBank, which guarantees the county's investments, "has put its trust division up for sale," Curfman said at yesterday's hearing on department budget requests for fiscal 1998, which begins July 1."

Donald Joseph Zeman, a retired managing partner in the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., died of a heart attack Friday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Timonium resident was 71. Mr. Zeman was born and raised in Northeast Baltimore and graduated from City College in 1949. He held various jobs before enlisting in the Army in 1950 and serving in Korea. After earning a bachelor's degree in accounting from Loyola College in 1959, he joined Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., now KPMG Peat Marwick.

LONDON - The office of Charles, the Prince of Wales, announced last night that it would investigate allegations about the royal intervention that ended the trial of Princess Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, Nov. 1 and subsequent charges that the prince covered up an alleged homosexual rape by a top aide and that his courtiers sold royal gifts. The rare look into the goings-on behind palace doors appeared to be an attempt to stem the tide of charge and innuendo against the royal family in recent weeks that has threatened to wash away the goodwill earned during the jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II's 50 years on the throne.