Langhorne

Willingboro's Crystal Langhorne couldn't be stopped this year on the basketball court. But it was the way she acted away from the action that impressed so many people. So much commotion was made about the way the 6-foot-2 junior dominated competition, it is a wonder that Langhorne has been able to keep her head from swelling. It doesn't matter that she receives upward of 30 recruiting letters per day. Or that she was a preseason all-American and actually played even better than the hype suggested.

Crystal Langhorne lost track of the numbers somewhere during the course of Willingboro's South Jersey Group 3 championship game against Woodrow Wilson last night. With the game well in hand early in the fourth quarter, the Chimeras' 6-foot-2 junior forward was down on the floor scrambling for a loose ball. She grabbed the ball, drove the lane and scored yet another basket. Langhorne, who had 28 points and 15 rebounds by halftime, finished with a career-high and school-record 47 points in leading the Chimeras to an easy 84-49 victory over Woodrow Wilson at Cherry Hill East.

Five-day-a-week workouts have paid off for Fairless Hills resident Susan Fischer, who took fourth place in the 2002 World Armwrestling Federation Championship. Fischer, 38, executive assistant at the Merrill Lynch office in Hopewell, N.J., competed against six women from around the world in the 111- to 121-pound right-handed class. The entrant from Bulgaria won the title at the competition, which took place in November in Illinois. Fischer qualified for the tournament after winning the gold medal in her division at the national championship last summer.

Crystal Langhorne is pretty smart. She has a 4.0 grade point average and is ranked in the top five of Willingboro's junior class. When she was a freshman, one calculation came particularly easily to her. She figured if she could average 10 points per game for her high school career, about 25 games per season, she would end up as a 1,000-point scorer. She had played organized basketball for just a year at that point, but she was, after all, a 6-foot-tall 14-year-old. Langhorne's going to have to do some recalculating.

Anything but a white gown. That was 15-year-old Brittany Edelman's prerequisite when selecting her formal attire for the Miss Pennsylvania Teen USA competition, scheduled for late this month. She was worried it would get dirty or collect hairs from her Rottweiler, Gus. Yet, despite her fears, a white, full-skirted gown hangs in her bedroom closet in a protective cover. She fell in love with it as soon as she tried it on. If only she can shake another concern so easily - stage fright.

The fire siren was so loud, so piercing, it caused a man pumping gas last week to cover his ears, duck next to his Ford pickup, and shout, "What in the heck is going on?" "I thought 'My God, it's the D.C. sniper,' " said Al Lewis, who was in town visiting from North Carolina. "Either that or the start of world war. " The jarring wail of the Langhorne-Middletown fire siren stunned Lewis, because, he said, "They don't have such things where I come from. " But for residents here, the siren has been a fact of life for nearly a century.

The Greenwood Mansion was first a vacation home for a furniture heir from Philadelphia. Then it was a girls' dormitory. Then a haunted-looking home for a woman who planned to make it look pretty but who ran out of money before she could. Neighbors say the house is so big that dreams seem to run right through it. In April, the 8,000-square-foot mansion with good looks but no real identity will house a 125-seat Italian restaurant. After nearly two years and almost $1 million worth of renovations, Paul Manes is putting the finishing touches on the 19th century house.

In the second half, when the opportunity is often left for the experienced players to come to the forefront, the Willingboro girls' basketball team thought otherwise. This time, playing in their biggest game of the season to date, the Chimeras relied on their youth. And, after their 73-62 victory last night over Wildwood in the semifinals of the NJSIAA Tournament of Champions at the Dunn Center, the Chimeras hope to ride that youth all the way to a tournament title. The Chimeras, with three underclassmen in the starting lineup, ignored the assumptions about a young team.

It's amazing what a few jump shots can do for a team's confidence - not to mention its offensive production. After hitting just one jumper and trailing by seven points in the first half, Willingboro found enough range from outside to complement another dominating performance by Crystal Langhorne to defeat Wildwood, 73-62, in last night's Tournament of Champions semifinal at the Dunn Center. The last time these two teams met, Willingboro beat Wildwood, 70-43, in a first-round TOC game in 2000.

The Willingboro High girls' basketball team won a state championship. And, please, accent the word team. Although sophomore Crystal Langhorne carried the Chimeras for most of the season and earned her squad's game MVP award yesterday, help came from everywhere as Willingboro topped Malcolm X Shabazz, 51-50, in the NJSIAA Group 3 championship game at the Dunn Center. The game was not decided until the final seconds when Shabazz's Jamillah White's three-pointer went in and out with the score 51-48.