Zentz

Westminster's superior depth, speed and stick skills wore down Francis Scott Key last night, enabling the Owls to dominate the Eagles in a Carroll County league game, 16-6. Joe Murk scored five goals for the visiting Owls (4-2 overall, 2-1 in the county), and Jason Holman added three goals and had two assists. Kyle Zentz contributed two goals and also had two assists. The Eagles (2-3, 0-3) wasted an outstanding performance by their goalkeeper, Kevin Vanderlinden, who made 23 saves. The Owls rebounded strongly from Tuesday's defeat at North Carroll, when 11 penalty minutes played a crucial role in that loss.

A 20-year-old Manchester man was sentenced yesterday to an 18-year prison term, the stiffest sentence handed down in the nearly fatal beating of Hereford Middle School teacher Jason Barnett. Jimmy Zentz, who pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in December, was sentenced by Baltimore County Circuit Judge Barbara Kerr Howe. Howe also agreed to recommend that Zentz, who has a history of drug and alcohol abuse, serve his time at Patuxent Institution, a state facility for prisoners with mental health problems.

A 20-year-old Manchester man was sentenced yesterday to an 18-year prison term, the stiffest sentence handed down in the nearly fatal beating of Hereford Middle School teacher Jason Barnett. Jimmy Zentz, who pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in December, was sentenced by Baltimore County Circuit Judge Barbara Kerr Howe. Howe also agreed to recommend that Zentz, who has a history of drug and alcohol abuse, serve his time at Patuxent Institution, a state facility for prisoners with mental health problems.

A 20-year-old man pleaded guilty yesterday to assault in the June beating that nearly killed Hereford Middle School teacher Jason Barnett. Jimmy Zentz, 20, of Manchester, hung his head in Baltimore County Circuit Court after Judge Barbara Kerr Howe ordered him held without bail because he faces up to 25 years when he is sentenced Feb. 2, 2001. Zentz - the oldest of the four people charged in the June 18 attack on Barnett, an agricultural sciences teacher - pleaded guilty to first-degree assault.

The Westminster boys lacrosse team no longer has the Ryans, but it still has the Kyles. Powered by junior attack Kyle Zentz's two goals and five assists and senior attack Kyle Koslowski's hat trick and an assist, the Owls outraced visiting Franklin, 14-9, in Westminster last night. With the victory, Westminster improved to 2-0. The Indians of Baltimore County dropped to 0-3. Last season, the Owls relied on Ryan Esposito and Ryan Fisher to score goals. With those two having graduated, Zentz and Koslowski have stepped up as Westminster looks to get to the Class 4A-3A state semifinals again.

Editor's note: Today, we conclude our series of stories following up on some of the people and issues that made news in the Baltimore area in 1998.It's not entirely true that people only talk about the weather but never do anything about it.Even now, as we watch the skies for predicted showers, the pertinent agents of the state's bureaucracy are deployed to deal with the dangerous consequences of months of the very worst weather -- drought, to be specific.A...

WILLARDS -- You know it's a bad fire season when a cypress swamp starts burning.The fire risk in Maryland is so high that a normally soggy Wicomico County swamp has gone up in flames. In the chilly hours after midnight yesterday, about 100 families were forced to leave their homes near this farm town because of dense smoke.About 160 firefighters took most of the day to knock down the 60-acre fire, but it will smolder until it rains or until everything flammable within the swamp has burned, state fire experts said.

Instead of enjoying a backyard Labor Day picnic or soaking up sun at the beach, dozens of Marylanders will be heading for a far less comfortable destination today -- a Nevada wildfire.The two-week mission will send 60 people from Maryland and Delaware to battle a raging forest fire in northern Nevada."We try to prepare folks mentally as to what to expect -- and train them in all the safety guidelines and survival [techniques]," said Alan Zentz, state fire supervisor for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fire Service.

Forty Maryland and Delaware firefighters are fighting difficult fires in dense timber "40 miles from nowhere" in northeastern Oregon.Two crews of 20 wildland firefighters each are "mopping up" hot spots along fire lines in the Umatilla National Forest, where beetles have killed many of the tightly packed trees, creating highly combustible sections of dead woodland.Dry lightning, which strikes without rain, has started many blazes in Umatilla and other parts of the West this year."It's a very big fire," Rick Lillard of Washington County was quoted as reporting from the scene.