Torn

Jamie Beale heard it pop.It was the eighth game in last year's basketball season, and only 20 seconds remained in regulation when Beale, Oakland Mills' point guard, raced to the corner for a loose ball. An Atholton player got there first.Beale moved to cut her opponent off, but her body and right knee were not in sync. And just that quickly, Beale's sophomore season was over.The damage was extensive -- a completely torn anterior cruciate ligament, a partially torn meniscus, and a partially torn medial cruciate ligament.

When she was 14 years old, Dana Dobbie read about the Maryland's women's lacrosse team in Sports Illustrated for Women. She decided right then that she wanted to play for the 10-time national-champion Terps. That may have seemed a stretch for a girl from Ontario who didn't even know the women's game existed until she was 13. Not to Dobbie. "Ever since then, I told my dad I wanted to play for the University of Maryland and he was just, `Yeah, Dana. Go do it. If that's what you want to do, then that's what's going to happen."

It only took a few hours for the floods that accompanied Tropical Storm Isabel to ransack houses, destroy marinas, crumble foundations and trash cars, leaving entire neighborhoods in eastern Baltimore County in ruins. But it could take months - maybe a year - to rebuild and repair the storm-torn neighborhoods in Maryland, according to federal disaster officials, construction experts and people who have experienced the wrath of storms like Isabel. "First it was shock and disbelief, and now reality has set in," said Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr., who expects complete recovery to take a year or longer and to cost millions of dollars.

The steel security bar clangs as Margaret Adelung, clad in an orange house dress, three sweaters and tattered pink slippers, opens the front door to her stark studio apartment. The folding metal chair, the aging black-and-white television and the bed covered with bath towels neatly pinned together as improvised blankets will be packed away. Baltimore County says the Essex apartment complex Adelung has called home for 20 years is so infested with drugs and crime that it must be torn down.

Sarasota, Fla.--A few days after she was born, Kimberly Mays was switched with another baby in the hospital nursery. Two sets of parents went home with the wrong infant.One of the many unfortunate results of that 14-year-old incident is that everyone involved has received multimillion-dollar settlements from the hospital.They therefore can afford to keep suing each other till the cows come home.''This case has been in court for five long years!'' cried one of Kimberly's three attorneys Monday.

When men's lacrosse coach Joe Breschi left Ohio State after the 2008 season to fill the same post at North Carolina, he took with him his network of connections with the Baltimore metropolitan area. Since his departure, however, the Buckeyes have maintained a pipeline to Charm City, using it to help build a roster that's only three wins from a national championship. Ohio State has six Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association players hailing from Baltimore, which is the second-most among the eight teams left in the NCAA tournament.

A decade ago tomorrow, the worst tornado in Maryland history struck La Plata, killing three people and flattening buildings with 261 mph winds. The F5 twister, the top of the scale for tornado intensity, left a plate of fried chicken on the counter of a fast-food restaurant but tore off two of the building's walls and its roof, according to one Baltimore Sun report. It left one resident's mailbox standing, waiting for more mail in front of a house that was torn from its foundation, resting on some bushes.

Dr. Michael Ain stands 4 feet 3. It's the first thing you notice. There's no way around it. He rolls his green surgical pants around the ankles. He climbs a step-stool to reach the operating table. Even then, his colleagues stand a foot or so above him.He's an orthopedic surgeon, a specialty usually reserved for the jocks of medicine. Ain doesn't exactly fit the stereotype, but he did wrestle in high school, and now he golfs on weekends and fixes bones with big power tools that could tear down walls.

A large group of teenagers were involved in a fight near the Inner Harbor in Baltimore on Monday afternoon, with several of the teens taken into custody, police said. One police officer was injured responding to the brawl when she fell after chasing one of the teenagers, scraping her legs and knees on the ground, Baltimore Police spokesman Detective Vernon Davis said. Witnesses said dozens of teens were involved in the fight, which started about 3:15 p.m. on the plaza in front of the Gallery on Pratt Street.

Local motocross phenom Travis Pastrana has built a multimillion-dollar career around gravity-defying stunts and impossible speeds. Now the 19-year-old faces thousands of dollars in reckless driving fines and, he said, deep regret for his role in a crash last month that left a friend unable to walk. Standing in a large motorbike garage on his property in Davidsonville yesterday, Pastrana said that he is reluctant to get behind the wheel of another car -- at least outside the racetrack.