Elizabethtown

Senior midfielder Wyeth Raws scored a pair of goals in less than a minute Saturday as the Elizabethtown men's soccer team (8-1) rolled to a 4-0 win over host Juniata. Raws, a West Chester East graduate, broke open a scoreless game when he got his first goal with 21 minutes, 38 seconds remaining in the first half. His second goal came with 20:46 remaining in the period. Raws is the Blue Jays' scoring leader with 19 points on seven goals and five assists. Raws' midfield teammate, Drew Tirney, is a graduate of Springfield.

An amazing turnaround has resulted in an NCAA Division III tournament berth for the Elizabethtown baseball team, which features Pitman graduate Kevin Bonner and Vineland graduate Jamie Newton. The Blue Jays, who started the season 0-5 in conference play, clinched the Middle Atlantic Conference Commonwealth League title by sweeping a doubleheader last Thursday from Widener. "The guys never stopped believing we could pull this off," first-year Elizabethtown coach Matt Jones said.

Valley Township police yesterday continued an investigation into the death of an Elizabethtown man who was struck by an Amtrak passenger train just west of Coatesville. Frank Aaron Kuch, 19, apparently was taking a shortcut when he crossed the tracks near Route 30 about 6:23 p.m. Monday, said Police Chief Gary Swiger. The Amtrak train, consisting of an engine and three cars, had just left the Coatesville train station and was bound for Lancaster and Harrisburg, traveling at 70 m.p.h.

Wyeth Raws scored a goal and added an assist on the game-winning goal Wednesday as the Elizabethtown men's soccer team nipped Drew, 3-2, to advance to tomorrow's Middle Atlantic Conference championship game. Raws, a graduate of West Chester East, and Jamie Cook, a graduate of Haverford School, have been key players for the Blue Jays who sport a 17-1-1 record. The lone loss to Messiah on Saturday snapped the Jays' 17-game unbeaten streak and shutout streak of 10 games. Elizabethtown, which finished second in the MAC Commonwealth League's regular season, will play Lycoming, the runner-up in the Freedom League, in the title game.

Elizabethtown (Pa.) College has already suffered as many men's basketball losses as it did during its magical 2001-02 season. But it can't blame Jon English, the Blue Jays' 6-foot-4 senior center from Haddon Township High. English leads Elizabethtown in several categories, including points, rebounds, blocked shots and field-goal percentage. The Blue Jays, who went 29-3 last season and reached the NCAA Division III finals, are off to a 4-3 start. English is averaging 19.4 points and 7.6 rebounds per game; he is shooting 58.6 percent from the floor and 79.1 percent from the foul line.

Brian and Dan Loftus, twins from Central Bucks West, went face to face for the first time as college basketball players on Feb. 5. Brian Loftus hit a shot with less than a minute remaining to help Elizabethtown edge Dan's Scranton squad, 70-69. Brian gave the Blue Jays a 70-67 lead and Scranton made it a one-point game with 12 seconds to play. Dan Loftus led Scranton with four assists and added six points and six steals in 27 minutes of play. Brian Loftus played 18 minutes and had four points, four assists, two blocked shots, and a steal.

Shawnee High graduate Liz Martin spent the past few basketball seasons in the pressure cooker of the NJSIAA tournament, but she says the NCAA Division III tournament is a huge step up as far as intensity and fanfare are concerned. That being the case, Martin is doing a good job of keeping up with the pace. The freshman center notched her fourth double-double with a career-high 20 points and 10 rebounds last night as College of New Jersey trounced Elizabethtown, 68-45, in a Division III Atlantic/Mid-Atlantic women's sectional semifinal.

Who says snakes don't fly? This 170-foot-long one, undergoing a preflight check by Joe Irato, soared above Fairmount Park along with hundreds of colorful kites during yesterday's Great Bermuda Kite Fly-In. The snake was flown by its maker, Larry Glecker of Elizabethtown. The event is held each spring.

HARRISBURG - Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett on Friday accused some jobless Pennsylvanians of choosing to collect unemployment checks rather than going back to work, prompting swift criticism from his Democratic opponent and one of the state's top labor leaders. "The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there," Corbett told Harrisburg radio station WITF at a campaign stop in Elizabethtown. "I've literally had construction companies tell me, 'I can't get people to come back to work until . . . they say, "I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out. " ' " Democratic candidate Dan Onorato charged Corbett with being out of touch at a time when Pennsylvania's unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent, a 26-year high.

HARRISBURG - Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett on Friday accused some jobless Pennsylvanians of choosing to collect unemployment checks rather than going back to work, prompting swift criticism from his Democratic opponent and one of the state's top labor leaders. "The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there," Corbett told Harrisburg radio station WITF at a campaign stop in Elizabethtown. "I've literally had construction companies tell me, 'I can't get people to come back to work until . . . they say, "I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out. " ' " Democratic candidate Dan Onorato charged Corbett with being out of touch at a time when Pennsylvania's unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent, a 26-year high.

Moving up in classification and playing 11 of its first 12 games of the 2007-08 season on the road may not bode well for the Lincoln men's basketball team, but coach Garfield Yuille believes his team is ready for the challenge. "We may struggle in the beginning as our players gain experience and get comfortable with one another, but I strongly believe we will get better as the season goes along," Yuille said. "I have faith in my guys that they will rise up and meet every challenge.

With Say Anything, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, writer-director Cameron Crowe set the bar so high that you forgive him a miss like Vanilla Sky. Elizabethtown, in which a sneaker designer wonders whether his dud of a product launch qualifies as a failure or a fiasco, is an unmitigated, inexplicable, unforgivable flop. Orlando Bloom stars as the shell-shocked Drew Baylor, designer for Mercury, a Nike-like firm, who is recalled to company headquarters as his defective shoe is recalled from every Foot Locker around the globe.

"Whoa! Listen to that," says Kirsten Dunst, leaning her head toward the open window, and the sounds of screaming fans echoing from the street below. It's the Toronto Film Festival, and gawkers and celeb-stalkers are camped at the entrance of the Four Seasons Hotel; every time a star enters or exits, there's a kind of ascending choral swell, like the sound of bettors at the Kentucky Derby as the horses head for the finish line. "I don't understand it," says the actress, who had been on the receiving end of the crowd's whoops earlier in the day. "People get so sycophantic - especially girls about boys.

Johns Hopkins men's soccer goalkeeper Gary Kane is on a pace to set NCAA records in two categories. The senior from Lansdale, Montgomery County, a graduate of La Salle High, has given up only 0.14 goals per game and has 12 shutouts to his credit for the unbeaten Blue Jays (15-0). Macalester's Dan Welsh holds the Division III record for lowest goals-against performance at 0.15 in 1997. Terry Leinendecker of St. John's (Minn.) shut out 15 of 18 opponents in 1982 to set the division record.

Two graduates of Southeastern Pennsylvania high schools, Melissa Menna and Becky Oxman, are among the scoring leaders for the Ohio University women's lacrosse team. Through 10 games, Menna, a senior who graduated from Downingtown, was third on the team with 23 points, on 17 goals and six assists. Oxman, a senior who won athlete of the week honors at the school earlier this season, had 13 goals and eight assists. She had a career high of seven goals and added three assists in a 20-10 win over Howard.

Elizabethtown (Pa.) College has already suffered as many men's basketball losses as it did during its magical 2001-02 season. But it can't blame Jon English, the Blue Jays' 6-foot-4 senior center from Haddon Township High. English leads Elizabethtown in several categories, including points, rebounds, blocked shots and field-goal percentage. The Blue Jays, who went 29-3 last season and reached the NCAA Division III finals, are off to a 4-3 start. English is averaging 19.4 points and 7.6 rebounds per game; he is shooting 58.6 percent from the floor and 79.1 percent from the foul line.

Shawnee High graduate Liz Martin spent the past few basketball seasons in the pressure cooker of the NJSIAA tournament, but she says the NCAA Division III tournament is a huge step up as far as intensity and fanfare are concerned. That being the case, Martin is doing a good job of keeping up with the pace. The freshman center notched her fourth double-double with a career-high 20 points and 10 rebounds last night as College of New Jersey trounced Elizabethtown, 68-45, in a Division III Atlantic/Mid-Atlantic women's sectional semifinal.

Outside hitter Mary Ellen Ryan, a member of the Merion Mercy Academy sports hall of fame, was named to the all-Capital Conference first team in volleyball for the second straight year. The Catholic University junior nursing student, who has registered more than 1,000 career kills, was also Catholic's most valuable player. Ryan, a Gulph Mills resident, led the Cardinals to a school-best 35-6 record this past season, including a school-record 18-match win streak. The team was ranked No. 2 in the Division III Mid-Atlantic Region and in the top 20 nationally.

Senior midfielder Wyeth Raws scored a pair of goals in less than a minute Saturday as the Elizabethtown men's soccer team (8-1) rolled to a 4-0 win over host Juniata. Raws, a West Chester East graduate, broke open a scoreless game when he got his first goal with 21 minutes, 38 seconds remaining in the first half. His second goal came with 20:46 remaining in the period. Raws is the Blue Jays' scoring leader with 19 points on seven goals and five assists. Raws' midfield teammate, Drew Tirney, is a graduate of Springfield.