Langhorne

Brenda Frese easily recalls her first impressions of Cheltenham High's Laura Harper and Willingboro High's Crystal Langhorne as the coach worked on returning the Maryland women's basketball team to prominence. "I just knew they were special players," Frese said yesterday about the two sophomore post players. "They had all the heart and obviously all the physical abilities to be two dominant and prominent players. " Maryland is preparing for the Atlantic Coast Conference party that is the NCAA Women's Final Four this weekend in Boston.

In a county located between big, bold Broadway and Broad Street's Avenue of the Arts, a good stage show is never hard to find. Often, it can be found in Lower Bucks. With a few community and semi-professional theaters and the well-established regional company Bristol Riverside Theatre, there's almost always something to see on stage. For this season, Bristol Riverside has mounted I Married Wyatt Earp and Moon Over Buffalo. From January to May, The Fantasticks, Proof and Baby will round out the season.

Marissa Coleman scored 21 points to lead 10th-ranked Maryland to an 88-50 victory over Gonzaga last night in the Paradise Jam tournament in Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands. Willingboro High graduate Crystal Langhorne added 13 points for the Terrapins (3-0), who had four players reach double figures in scoring. Maryland center Laura Harper, a sophomore from Cheltenham High, fell hard into the stands while fighting for a loose ball, injuring the back of her neck. She got up slowly several minutes later and held her neck on the bench for the rest of the game.

The phone calls were Crystal Langhorne's first indication that she was having an outstanding year. The Atlantic Coast Conference's rookie of the year award, all-conference second-team honors, and a selection to the ACC's all-tournament team confirmed what friends from Willingboro had called to tell the freshman on the Maryland women's basketball team. She sure is good. "Friends from high school started calling," she said. "I realized people were reading about us. " Langhorne has played nothing like a freshman.

William Bresnahan, an inventor and business owner accused of funneling money from his nonprofit ministry into his for-profit companies, said yesterday that he pursued income only to benefit the needy. Bresnahan, 57, of Langhorne, Bucks County, visibly strained to keep his annoyance in check as he responded to questions from Assistant District Attorney Megan K. Kampf on the fourth day of his nonjury trial in Chester County Court. The former Philadelphia police officer, who contributed to a controversial book about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, faces 205 counts of theft and state charity law violations.

The Langhorne-Middletown Fire Company is so old that its early history has been lost to time. But the company will celebrate a 175th anniversary tomorrow anyway. The festivities will mark the purchase of a fire engine in 1829, according to the fire company's own history. That history notes that some early records were lost and that the company could have been fighting fires years before then. In the 19th century, according to the history, the company was known as the Attleborough Fire Company.

A Catholic priest and a Bucks County nurse who worked with disabled children were among three people from the area indicted yesterday on federal child-pornography charges. The Rev. Matthew J. Kornacki, 57, was charged in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia with possessing child pornography. Investigators allegedly found images of child porn on Kornacki's personal laptop computer at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, where he lived and worked at the time. Kornacki, ordained in 1973, lists an address at a Downingtown psychiatric facility for priests and other clergy, federal officials said.

Home-building executive Bruce Toll is buying Reedman Auto World Center, a huge car dealership on U.S. Route 1 in Langhorne that has been under family ownership for more than 50 years. Toll, a cofounder of Toll Bros. Inc., said he hoped he could do for cars what he and his brother, Bob, have done for houses: sell more of them. While some feared he might tear down the Reedman complex and build houses, he said yesterday that he has no such intention. In announcing the purchase, Bruce Toll said he planned to spruce up the dealership and eventually might spend "way over $10 million to bring it into the 21st century.

They didn't get to always run and gun, but Cheltenham's Laura Harper and Willingboro's Crystal Langhorne insist that they still had fun. The Inquirer's girls' basketball players of the year - Harper in Southeastern Pennsylvania and Langhorne in South Jersey - were members of the East team that beat the West, 91-66, last night in the third annual McDonald's all-American high school girls' basketball game at the Ford Center. The 6-foot-4 Harper finished with seven points and seven rebounds in 18 minutes.

Why not go with the best? That was a question Willingboro's Crystal Langhorne and Cheltenham's Laura Harper heard repeatedly throughout their college recruiting process. Both are considered two of the top high school basketball players in the country. This season, they were McDonald's all-Americans and Inquirer players of the year in South Jersey and Southeastern Pennsylvania, respectively. Yesterday, Harper was named first-team all-state. Tomorrow, they will play in the McDonald's all-American game here at the Ford Center.