Team Members

For most, the grooming started years ago in recreation leagues on Baltimore County's west side where neighborhood coaches taught spindly legged boys how to play the seams and snap a pigskin.Years later, a handful of peewee players turned brawny young men, members of rival football teams at Randallstown High School and Milford Mill Academy, will meet tonight to decide bragging rights big enough to last them a lifetime.Both teams -- the Milford Millers and Randallstown Rams -- are drooling at a chance to become this year's Class 3A state champion.

COMPETITION, the great motivator, works in classrooms as well as on the football field."It's Academic," a weekly television quiz program, gives students the opportunity to compete in an academic arena -- and on Saturday, viewers saw a local team fight its way to victory.Atholton High School's "It's Academic" team topped opponents from Frederick County's Middletown High and Anne Arundel's Northeast High on the show taped last month and broadcast on WJZ-TV (Channel 13)."It was a tough match," said Sandra Gaffigan, media specialist and sponsor for the Atholton team, which she has coached for six years.

GLENELG HIGH School's drill team has a track record of success at regional, state and national competitions. But winning is only part of the story.This talented, all-female group of 23 sophomores, juniors and seniors meets four times a week for three-hour practices.The drill team is sometimes called a dance team. Its programs include kick and pom routines and jazz dancing. The girls perform at football and basketball games and pep rallies.They compete most weekends from December through March.

For most, the grooming started years ago in recreation leagues on Baltimore County's west side where neighborhood coaches taught spindly legged boys how to play the seams and snap a pigskin.Years later, a handful of peewee players turned brawny young men, members of rival football teams at Randallstown High School and Milford Mill Academy, will meet tonight to decide bragging rights big enough to last them a lifetime.Both teams -- the Milford Millers and Randallstown Rams -- are drooling at a chance to become this year's Class 3A state champion.

John Carroll's Maggie Pyzik has pitched a no-hitter, a one-hitter and a two-hitter already this season.The left-handed sophomore, who pitched just three innings last year, has gone 27 2/3 innings this spring with three shutouts. Pyzik (3-2) has allowed just nine hits and six earned runs and has struck out 42 batters as the Patriots (5-4) improved to 4-1 in the Catholic League B Division.She struck out seven in a 13-0 five-inning no-hitter vs. St. Mary's and struck out 14 in an 11-0, six-inning win over Mount Carmel.

School's out at South Carroll High. The halls are empty. The athletic teams are on the practice fields -- with one exception. The members of the girls' varsity soccer team sit quietly in a classroom.Their coach, Jim Horn, is an easygoing and popular social studies teacher at the school, but he's unyielding on one matter when it comes to the young athletes on his team. Before hitting the practice fields, they've got to hit the books.Horn started his mandatory half-hour study hall for players last year.

TWISTER NEWS LIVE can be seen beginning at 8: 35 a.m. each school day at Oklahoma Road Middle School.The morning news show is produced, directed and anchored by 30 seventh-grade students in the Extended Enrichment Program with guidance from teacher Frank Tippett.Beginning at 8: 15 a.m. each day, the production room adjacent to the school's media center buzzes with activity as the students review and edit local and national news from the daily newspapers. Tippett may offer suggestions on the choice of stories, but more often than not allows students to chose the stories for the 10-minute broadcast.

How to winThe article in The Sun on March 16 lauded the accomplishment of the Forest Park High School boys basketball team that won a state championship with the unlikely regular-season record of 2-15. These 15 losses had come in the tough city league, and the Forest Park victory was a great testament to the high level of play in Baltimore City.However, Forest Park did not learn an important lesson enduring all those losses. The team must not have learned how to wingraciously. The actions of the team after the victory did not reflect the spirit of competition or the celebration of victory.

Social studies teacher Ralph Chiaramonte has served on his share of committees in his 18 years at Liberty High School.Some have been worthwhile, others have been forgettable. But there's one committee that Chiaramonte has stuck with for 11 years -- the Eldersburg school's Student Assistance Team.Each Thursday, the group -- which generally includes a guidance counselor, administrator, pupil personnel worker, nurse and addictions counselor -- meets before school to discuss how to help students who have been identified as being at risk for substance abuse problems.

Baltimore executive George Collins, who has spent more than $2.5 million to build a boat for the Whitbread Round the World Race, has decided not to sail with his crew when the race starts off Southampton, England, later this month, team members say.Collins, 57, an amateur in a grueling race dominated by professionals, surprised the sailing community this week by removing himself from all but the race's shorter legs."

The hipsters and geeks milling expectantly in the dim lounge reach one by one into a hat. The slip of paper they pull out holds not only the theme for their weekend but, possibly, a chance to earn some celluloid swagger. Superhero. Fantasy. Drama. Romance. Each of the 50-some teams competing in Baltimore's 48 Hour Film Project randomly pulls a genre with the expectation that the team members will return 48 hours later, short movie in hand. It's a frenetic artistic exercise of scripting, shooting, editing and scoring that leaves the city's would-be Spielbergs, Coppolas, Hitchcocks and Scorseses in an adrenaline-fueled creative countdown.

They've boxed up their scenery. Shipped their props. Created a banner of bobble-headed people with photos of their faces. The only thing left to do for Elmwood Elementary School's Odyssey of the Mind team members is to pack their game faces, brain power and spontaneity as they head to Iowa this week for the 30th World Finals. The Baltimore County team of five fourth-graders is the only elementary-school group representing Maryland in the international competition, which pushes students to channel their creativity into problem-solving activities.

Harold A. Smith was in China when he first spotted dragon boats. Chinese crew members were paddling their boats through Hong Kong's harbor while a crowd watched. Smith, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, was smitten with the sport. "I thought, 'This is fabulous,' " he recalls. "People were yelling their heads off and were really excited about it." Smith wanted to bring the sport to the Inner Harbor as well as drum up support for the 80 social-service programs Catholic Charities represents.

COLLEGE PARK - August preseason camp might be grueling and hot, but it sure beats what happens to Maryland football players who run afoul of coach Ralph Friedgen's intricate points system - a motivational tool that can't help but grab team members' attention. Consider the experience of fourth-year defensive back Anthony Wiseman. Under wispy clouds turned orange by the sunrise, Wiseman jogged up and down the Byrd Stadium stairs in shorts and a T-shirt last year, beginning at 5:30 a.m. His lonely run - captured by the cameras of Terrapins Rising, the team reality show - turned him into a cautionary tale for teammates who prefer to sleep past dawn.

Warm-ups, which began an hour ago, have come to a close as it nears 8 o'clock Saturday morning. Team members, dripping in their bathing suits with wet hair plastered to their faces, gather around the pool for premeet cheers. Decked out in a sparkly purple sarong and purple and blue Piranhas tie-dyed T-shirt, Pointer's Run coach Caitlin McGity is doing everything she can to psych up her team. "We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit, how about you?" shout the voices of about 250 swimmers for the Pointer's Run Piranhas, with McGity leading the way. Members of the visiting Harper's Choice Challenge stand on the other side of the River Hill pool, and they weren't bashful with their response.

The team of Howard County cooking students competing in the National ProStart Invitational last week received praise for their recipes and compliments on their knife skills, but did not place in the Top 5, said Elaine Heilman, the Applications and Research Lab teacher who supervises the team. "The students did very well," Heilman said. The final ranking won't be known for about two weeks. This marked the fourth year in a row that the ARL team won the state-level cooking competition, earning the chance to compete at the national level.

The Long Reach Community Association will hold a Candidates' Night at 7 p.m. April 10 in the Tamar Room at Stonehouse, 8775 Cloudleap Court. Candidates for the Village Board will be available to discuss current concerns in Long Reach. Information: 410-730-8113. Group to share experiences on HIV PFLAG-Columbia/Howard County will hold its monthly meeting at 7:30 p.m. April 8 at the Owen Brown Interfaith Center, 7246 Cradlerock Way. Members of the local group, Positive Voices of Baltimore, will share their experiences living with HIV and AIDS through music.

Howard County's Relay for Life, a community overnight event in which team members raise funds for the American Cancer Society, will be held June 6-7 at Hammond High School. Team members camp out and keep a team member walking around the school track throughout the night. Teams are forming now. For the first time, captains can register teams on-line at www.howardrfl.com and team members can register for an existing team. Registration is $10. A team captains' meeting will be held March 20. Howard County's 2007 Relay, attended by roughly 1,000 people, raised more than $270,000.

Baltimore's Westport Patriots - a football team made up of youths 12 to 15 years old from some of the city's toughest neighborhoods - took first place in their division in the Pop Warner Super Bowl Championship in Florida last weekend. But hours after the game, the Baltimore boys say they were verbally harassed by players from Hawaii. A fight ensued, and before the night was over the Westport team - as well as two teams from Hawaii - were ejected from Disney's All-Star Resort. It was a chaotic scene, according to local sheriff's deputies who took "conflicting statements" from members of the three teams and, as a result, have declined to file charges.

For months, members of Duke's men's 2006 lacrosse team and their families quietly seethed at university administrators and faculty members who they believed abandoned them when three players were falsely accused of rape. Yesterday, the three men who were accused - they were declared innocent by the North Carolina attorney general in April - reached financial settlements that will eliminate the possibility of lawsuits by the former players against Duke. Neither Duke nor former teammates David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty would disclose details of the settlements, but a Duke official said there was "a financial component."