Team Members

Racking up a high score of 176.5 points, a team average of 605 and a total pins-plus-handicap for the season of 41,153, the team from Harford Tech won the Forest Hill Lanes 2012-2013 High School Bowling championship. The team was comprised of Chris Marshall, Ben Marshall, Alex Sorlin and Flavio Reyes. Second place, for the second year in a row, were Ben Smith, Aaron Simpers and Matt Wassin from Aberdeen.   Other significant winners were Wassin from Aberdeen, who for the second straight year racked up the individual boys' highest average.

Hit your buzzers if you can answer this question: How many juniors and seniors does it take to get to the Super Bowl in the Baltimore/Washington/Central Virginia "It's Academic" Tournament? Bzzzzzzzttt. None -- if you're talking about Howard High School. Howard's "It's Academic" team -- all sophomores -- won the Baltimore area's championship game last month, advancing to the televised quiz show's Super Bowl for the first time in at least 10 years. They'll compete against the winners of the Washington and Central Virginia area competitions Saturday.

EACH YEAR, teams from Columbia Neighborhood Swim League sponsor individual fund-raisers for charity. For the Phelps Luck team, the event is more than altruistic. It's personal. Bob Baker, father of Kimberly, 12, a swim team member, is director of Special Olympics Howard County, which has its headquarters on Rumsey Road. And, Kimberly's sister, Stephanie, 16, is a member of the Special Olympics Howard County Aquatics Team. Stephanie, a Long Reach High School student, was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called Prader-Willi Syndrome, which causes mental impairments, when she was 8. For two years, the Phelps Luck swim team has raised money for Special Olympics Howard County with an all-night swim-a-thon.

The videotape the Bosnian Olympic bobsled team brought to Clarksville Middle School yesterday opened with the glory of the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, then jumped to today's war-ravaged Balkan city, where the hillside bobsled run has been used as a sniper's nest.Just before the 12:30 p.m. seventh-grade social studies class arrived, bobsled team brakeman Igor Boras screened the videotape for teacher Norma Rose because he was concerned that the bloodshed depicted might disturb the students.

I RAN OUT into the street so that I would not hear my daughter screaming," said the Egyptian woman as she recalled the moment when her child underwent the trauma experienced by thousands of girls in her country every year. "I am 65 years old, and yet I have not forgotten," she added. A father says of his young daughter, "She will no longer look me in the eyes. -- I did this out of love, and now we cannot speak." Both of these parents, spurred by profound remorse, have become advocates against a custom they once followed without question.

A Liberty High School teacher has won top honors from a professional association for her work as a member of a team of faculty members that helps students who might be headed toward drug and alcohol abuse.Joanne Neil, who teaches home economics at Liberty, was named 1995 Person of the Year this month by the Maryland Student Assistance Program Professional Association."Even I am awed. There are so many people involved who could have won it, I got it for the whole team," she said.Mrs. Neil works with teachers, administrators, guidance counselors and drug counselors in an effort to reduce drug and alcohol use by students.

The chess team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County garnered its sixth win in seven years at the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship this week, taking home $1,000 in prize money and a first-place trophy. In addition to the championship won by the four members of UMBC's B chess team, the four A team members tied for second place with their rivals from the University of Texas at Dallas. UMBC tied with the Texas school for the Pan Am championship in 2000 and 2001. Baltimore grand master Alex Sherzer, nicknamed "The Surgeon," also came away with honors as the best player on board No. 1 for the tournament, which was held Friday through Monday in Miami.

They felt intimidated. They endured snickers from competitors. But the five girls from Perry Hall High School persevered and now are looking ahead to Detroit. It took an unprecedented effort by Lindsay McCann, Abigail Atkinson, Eun Lim, Lindsay Kegel and Lauren Jones to get this far. Never before has an all-girl team won a regional contest in DaimlerChrysler's "Build Your Dream Vehicle" competition, now in its sixth year. The Perry Hall five left behind a nearly all-boy field, earning a free trip to Detroit next month, where they will face off against eight teams of young aspiring engineers from around the country.

Two county 4-H Dairy Bowl teams placed first at the state competition in College Park, capping a year of studying, missed TV and hard work."It can be sort of demanding, knowing everything at once," saidsenior team member Mary Ellen Seraydian of Taneytown."

Ex-execution official testifies about injection, A former Maryland execution commander said yesterday that no one on the state's execution team monitors the anesthetic depth of an inmate in the moments before the final deadly chemical is injected "because we're not even trained to do that." The former execution commander testified in federal court in Baltimore in a courtroom closed to the public to protect his identity. As reporters listened to the testimony from another courtroom, he was referred to throughout the proceeding as "Mr. Z."