Towson Catholic

April Anderson Greene taught her son, Donte, much more than how to play basketball. As a federal government employee, she took him around the world and showed him the difference between a game's outcome and real loss. Today, the Towson Catholic senior is one of the nation's top high school players, with potential that has earned him a scholarship to Syracuse, but because his mother died unexpectedly six years ago and isn't alive to see it, Donte Greene twice tried to throw everything away by attempting suicide.

The 36th Baltimore Catholic League basketball tournament final will feature an encore tonight at 7:30, as No. 1 Towson Catholic and No. 2 Mount St. Joseph advanced with semifinal victories last night. Towson Catholic (30-4) blew out Cardinal Gibbons, 66-43, and Mount St. Joseph (25-7) routed Archbishop Spalding, 63-35, to set up the rematch tonight at Loyola College's Reitz Arena. The Gaels won last year's final, 62-52, on the way to a record-breaking 38-1 season. Mount St. Joseph went undefeated last season in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference and in the BCL, and tonight the Gaels stand in the way of the Owls' attempt to duplicate the feat.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR Malcolm Delaney Towson Catholic After a 64-59 victory over rival Mount St. Joseph in early February that clinched a league title, Delaney talked about the big difference in his play as a senior. "Last year I went away from the ball a lot [in crucial situations]," he said. "I didn't take it upon myself to help the team out more. So, this year I promised my team that I would thrive under pressure." Delaney did just that, and his change in approach helped turned the top-ranked Owls into a powerhouse.

Timely baskets from guard Vanessa Collier, a fine all-around effort from forward Kelsey Erdman, and scrappy defensive play enabled the River Hill girls basketball team to come away with a 47-46 win over visiting Centennial in Howard County play last night. Collier scored a team-high 13 points -- including a three-pointer midway through the fourth quarter to give River Hill a 43-40 lead -- and Erdman added 10 points and 13 rebounds as the No. 15 Hawks were able to avenge an early-season loss to the Eagles.

BOYS BASKETBALL PLAYER OF THE YEAR Dino Gregory Mount St. Joseph Gregory averaged 14.4 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.7 blocked shots in leading the second-ranked Gaels (25-8) to second place finishes behind No. 1 Towson Catholic in both the Baltimore Catholic League and the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference. The 6-foot-8 senior post player, who had committed to Maryland before his junior season, was a guiding force for a young Gaels backcourt, whose inexperience put added pressure on him offensively.

The first major hurdle is in the books for top-ranked Towson Catholic. The Owls rolled to the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference championship, 71-49 over No. 3 McDonogh at Gilman last night. Played in front of a capacity crowd of more than 1,200, the Owls claimed their first MIAA A Conference crown since 2001 and their third overall, the other in 1999 after the Maryland Scholastic Association became the MIAA in 1995-96. "We're trying to go out with the Catholic League championship and go to Alhambra and try to knock off DeMatha," said senior Malcolm Delaney, who had a game-high 22 points for the Owls.

MARYLAND Astronaut faces charges An astronaut who grew up in Rockville, graduated from the Naval Academy and last summer flew on the space shuttle Discovery was charged with the attempted murder of a woman she believed to be the rival love interest of a space shuttle pilot. pg 1a Md. weighs terrapin ban Maryland is considering a ban on the capture of diamondback terrapin after watermen reported trapping more than 10,000 of the rare turtles last year, a twentyfold increase from the year before.

Playing organized sports can sometimes be a blessing and sometimes be a curse. Last night, St. Frances got both in the same game at the Charm City Classic at Loyola College's Reitz Arena. The Panthers (0-1) were in the lead, by as many as 19 points, until 1:13 remained before falling to Pennsylvania's Neumann-Goretti, 62-57, in the third game of the night. "We stood around in the second half and watched Sean [Mosely] instead of playing our game and getting open," Panthers coach William Wells said.

Washington -- Georgetown-bound Austin Freeman scored 31 points to lead DeMatha to a 78-71 victory over top-ranked Towson Catholic last night as part of a showcase doubleheader at American University's Bender Arena. In the first game of the ESPNU-televised event pitting top teams from the Baltimore and Washington areas against each other, No. 2 Mount St. Joseph outlasted St. John's, 69-65, in overtime. Hyattsville's DeMatha (14-4), ranked No. 2 by The Washington Post and 18th nationally by USA Today, led 58-44 early in the fourth quarter, but Malcolm Delaney and Donte Greene led a furious comeback by the Owls (20-4)

A pair of free throws by junior guard Keith Jenifer gave third-ranked Towson Catholic a one-point lead with 32 seconds left and the host Owls added two more in the final eight seconds to upset No. 1 Archbishop Spalding, 63-60, yesterday.Thabo Letsebe and Gil Goodrich, who was fouled with a second left after making a steal, each made the back end of trips to the free-throw line for the final margin before an overflow crowd.In avenging a 71-68 overtime loss at Spalding on Jan. 15, the No. 3 Owls (19-4)

Colleges NCAA women's tourney back at Comcast Center in 2011 The University of Maryland has been selected as a first- and second-round site for the 2011 NCAA women's basketball tournament. The Terps are 5-1 in NCAA tournament games at Comcast Center, winning four in a row to earn trips to the Sweet 16 each of the past two seasons in front of home fans. Ticket information will be released this summer. The four regional sites for 2011 are Dayton, Ohio, Spokane, Wash., Dallas and Philadelphia.

Towson Catholic High School's shiny 2009 yearbook went to press long before the school abruptly shut its doors in July for financial reasons, but the title proved to be prophetic: "On the Road." "TC," the yearbook begins, "is a school filled with students who are going places." Indeed, the closing scattered 163 students to different schools around the region. On Sunday, many of those students gathered in Parkville for a festive reunion. They swapped hugs, shared laughs, bought discounted Towson Catholic gear while they still could - and picked up copies of that last-ever yearbook, the Hilltop.

Carmelo Anthony, the Denver Nuggets' star forward and former Towson Catholic standout, is back in Baltimore to head up his favorite cause. Starting today, he teams with Grammy-nominated R&B artist Mario Barrrett for the "Melo and Mario Face Off Weekend," a series of fundraising events to help underprivileged city kids. A kickoff celebration will be held at 4 p.m. today at the Carmelo Anthony Center at 1100 E. Fayette St., where hundreds of kids are to receive school supplies. A celebrity bowling tournament will take place Friday evening at a private location, followed by a 10 p.m. after-party fundraiser at 700 S. Caroline St. that is open to the public.

Towson Catholic parents agree to drop lawsuit 2 The parents of two former students at Towson Catholic High School have agreed to dismiss their lawsuit trying to keep the school open. The parents agreed on Wednesday to dismiss their suit against the Archdiocese of Baltimore and school administrators with prejudice, which means they cannot file it again. Baltimore County Circuit Judge Ruth Ann Jakubowski had been scheduled to hear the archdiocese's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. She denied the parents' request for a temporary restraining order last month to keep the school open.

No one said they were giving up. But students, parents and alumni at Towson Catholic High School seemed resigned to the school's closing after a Baltimore County judge rejected an effort to force it to open for another year. "I'm just very, very disappointed," Lois Windsor, president of the Towson Catholic parents' association, said after the ruling Friday afternoon. "From here, we'll discuss with our attorneys where we go and make a decision that way. Right now, my main concern is getting my daughter now focused and supporting her in a new school."

Towson Catholic High School's surprise closing this month has left dozens of families scrambling to find new schools for the fall semester. Now the 163 students who had enrolled at the Towson school are scattering, with some heading to Baltimore Lutheran School, others to Catholic schools such as Calvert Hall and Mercy, and still others to public high schools. Some students have not figured out where they're going; and others are pinning their hopes on a court hearing scheduled Friday, when a Baltimore County judge will be asked to block Towson Catholic's closing.

Towson Catholic has long served non-parishioners Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder is all wrong about Towson Catholic High School evolving in recent decades from serving students from the church to drawing students from beyond the parish ("Pastor says he fought to keep school open," July 16). I began [at] Immaculate Conception school in the '40s and graduated from Towson Catholic in 1949, and there were more students there at that time from way beyond the parish than along Belair Road, York Road and Harford Road.

The likely closure of Towson Catholic High School is heartbreaking for the affected students and the entire community. Sadly, though, this is just the latest episode in the ongoing tragedy of urban Catholic education. For decades, Catholic schools in American cities have been disappearing, but in recent years the pace has accelerated rapidly. In the last decade alone, more than 1,000 Catholic schools nationwide have closed their doors for the last time. The Archdiocese of Baltimore has lost 13 schools since 1998 (including both archdiocese-run and, like Towson Catholic, non-archdiocese-run schools)

In the week since the decision to close Towson Catholic High School was announced, students, parents and alumni have focused their anger on a single man. Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder has been accused of planning to shut down the school since he came to Immaculate Conception Church nine years ago, of turning down fundraising ideas and of speaking insensitively in referring to the student body as "a whole different community." Tinder, in his first interview since announcing the closing, described the anger directed at him as "poignant."

The fight over the fate of Towson Catholic High School escalated Tuesday when the alumni association filed suit against the school's parish and its pastor over the abrupt closing of the school. The group is seeking an injunction to keep the school open at least another year. "This closing is a slap in the face to the alumni and to anyone who ever loved this school. We were ready to remedy this through various options, but we could not get the archdiocese to the table," said alumni association president Paul Mecinski, who announced the lawsuit at a rally last night.