New Season

The Glen Mills basketball team held its destiny in its own hands. But in 2 fleeting seconds, it was snatched away. Grabbed and throttled by Chester's Larry Yarbray with a game-winning jump shot as the clock expired. It was that single play that prevented Glen Mills from claiming a tie for the last season's Del-Val League title and forcing a one-game playoff with Chester for the championship. "We never were able to recover from that loss," said coach Tom Mann. That became apparent when the Bulls, a heavy favorite to advance far into the District 1 playoff tournament, couldn't get past their second-round game with Norristown.

Good morning, class. Now that all of you eager students are firmly back in the swing of scholastic life, you're probably ready for some serious bookwork. So, in the spirit of enhancing your classroom preparation, here is a series of questions and answers on South Jersey football, both past and present, that you'll definitely want to read up on sometime this fall. We call this The Inquirer Roundtable, where semi-serious questions are posed, and semi-serious answers are given. But take notes.

It wasn't exactly the kind of weather golfers enjoy. The thermometer held firmly at 38 degrees and the players were bundled in winter jackets, sweaters and hooded sweatshirts. Despite the morning cold, golfers turned out by the dozen for opening day Friday at the county-owned Oxford Valley Park course in Levittown. In the first hour, 27 golfers signed up to play, and the first 18 were already gathered at the clubhouse by the 8 a.m. starting time. Most were senior citizens, and most knew one other from playing together in past seasons.

The Philadelphia Singers opened their new season with a bang yesterday evening at the Church of the Holy Trinity. Director Michael Korn led his forces, accompanied by the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra, through a broad cross-section of the choral literature, capped by a marvelously taut, vibrant rendition of Mozart's Solemn Vespers of the Confessor, K. 339. Of four vocal soloists for this work, soprano Doralene Davis was the standout, especially...

Haverford High's baseball team has nine seniors back from a club that went 3-17 last year. Again, that's last year, a season the Fords would just as soon forget. The reason for the optimism in the new season is because Haverford High is playing like a brand-new team this spring, streaking to a 3-0 start in the Central League while playing the kind of down-but-not-out baseball that would warm the heart of any coach. "These guys are not losers," Haverford coach Paul Bogosian said.

Last year, Cardinal O'Hara dominated the Catholic League, Cheltenham controlled the PIAA, and Central swept the Public League. Now that a new season is starting, everyone wants to know: Can they do it again, or will somebody replace the champions? New players, new contenders, new rivalries will make this an exciting season in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Here are 15 burning questions to ponder at the start of the girls' basketball season: Q: After the graduation of five starters, can Cardinal O'Hara rebuild?

The 1986-87 wrestling season is here, but many who made the '85-86 campaign something special are not. Graduated are Ridley's Rob Harmon, Sun Valley's Bob Mariotti and Steve Lloyd, Springfield's Ken Hoeffert, Upper Darby's Matt Ianetta and K. C. Barr and St. James' Mark Walsh. All distinguished themselves not only during the regular season but throughout the postseason. However, several area grapplers appear capable of duplicating or possibly improving on the best performances offered by the class of '86. Names to be filed away for future reference include Greg Alfonsi, Dave Hoefner, Dave Holdsworth and Dave Romesburg of Springfield; Len Savioz of Strath Haven; Chris Carr of Upper Darby; Joe Yanulevich of Interboro; Matt Andrews of Glen Mills, and Neil Madison of Sun Valley.

On opening day, everyone's an optimist. At Veterans Stadium on Tuesday, fans' hopes were dented when Lenny Dykstra broke his wrist and the Phils lost their opener. But the season is young, and the new uniforms are a hit. On the field are (from left) Dykstra, Mariano Duncan, Dave Hollins, John Kruk, Dale Murphy, Darren Daulton and Wes Chamberlain.

The Network for New Music opens its season Sunday with four new works. Not having heard any of them, one can only conjecture, but they presuppose an emotional and intellectual range typical of the network's previous five fine seasons. They include Snow Night, a timbral exploration of the marimba and piano by Jan Krzywicki, which suggests a certain delicacy; the prolific Meyer Kupferman's Saturnalis, for amplified cello and tuba, which brings to mind a blustering patriarchy, and Paul Lansky's Stroll.

September brings with it more than just cool air and colorful back-to- school vestments. It also ushers in a new season of bright ideas on the cultural front - in museums, concert halls and theaters. They are ideas that, in the words of general manager Greg Row of the Peoples Light and Theater Company, "make people look at the way we live together, see people in life that may not come to them, and expand their knowledge of how people live. " Following are some of the cultural events of this season: The Peoples Light and Theater Company of Malvern will again attempt an idea it tried for the first time during the summer: staging two shows at once.

Pale purple crocuses out front. A robin at the bird feeder. The dashboard clock finally clicked 1 hour ahead. You pick your signs of spring, I'll pick mine. For me, it's the arrival of a gaggle of baseball books, written by dedicated writers, published by courageous publishers, to be purchased by hope-springs-eternal fans. Today, a trifecta: a book about a team (the Phillies), a book about a manager (Terry Francona), a book about a player (Mike Piazza). If books were judged like beauty pageants, "The Phillies Experience" by Tyler Kepner, would win from here to Atlantic City.

Fans got into the action at Citizens Bank Park Saturday afternoon for the Phillies' last exhibition game against the Toronto Blue Jays before the regular season begins Monday. In the stands and in the tailgating lots outside Lincoln Financial Field, buoyed by the sunny weather and the promise of a new season, fans said they were optimistic about the season to come. "I'm kind of upbeat -- I really am," said Doug Henningar, 56, of Northeast Philadelphia, who was at the game with his nephew Gary.

The editorial weeping has begun. "Television Without Barbara Walters Is Hard to Imagine," reads a headline on Forbes.com. Hard, yet not impossible? A source tells the Associated Press the 83-year-old journo, famed the world over for throwing the softest of softball questions to celebs both beloved and despised, plans to retire in May 2014. Babs' TV work goes back to 1961, when she was hired as a writer for the Today show. Most of her work today is on daytime gabfest The View , which she created in '97. No comment yet from ABC or Walters.

The Union begin their fourth Major League Soccer season (Saturday at 4 p.m. vs. Sporting Kansas City at PPL Park) in a different state of mind than the previous three. For the first time, the Union will open a season without team manager Peter Nowak, who was given the boot and replaced by assistant coach John Hackworth last June. Nowak knows soccer but is a coach who has a short expiration date on his methods. He quickly wore out his welcome with his overbearing ways. The fact that he didn't exactly pass the talent evaluation test didn't help.

In the west end of PPL Park, a banner runs beneath the length of the scoreboard, asking in bold letters, "What Do You Stand For?" The Union will begin forming their own answer to that question Saturday afternoon when they open their fourth MLS season at PPL Park against Sporting K.C. After an offseason reshaping the roster, and with manager John Hackworth entering his first full season, the Union's identity is more clear than it had been for...

*  SMASH. 9 p.m. Tuesday, NBC10. LIKE A Broadway-bound show that opens out of town - or has a rocky time in previews - NBC's "Smash" returns for its second season Tuesday still a work in progress. But at least there is progress. Maybe no one ever envisioned that a show about the making of a Broadway musical would become a metaphor for the process itself, but with creator Theresa Rebeck having exited at the end of a first season that attracted nearly as many hate-watchers as it did fans, "Smash" is working to clean up the nonmusical parts of its act. Which is also what's happening on "Bombshell," the show's Marilyn Monroe musical.

Every new year in golf is shrouded in mystery like the clouds over Molokai across the channel from Kapalua, Hawaii, where the PGA Tour gets under way with the Tournament of Champions on Friday. Here's what to look for in the new season: European captain. The Americans went back in time by picking Tom Watson as Ryder Cup captain. Does that mean Europe needs to answer with a larger-than-life figure for its captain? There have been suggestions that Colin Montgomerie would return over Darren Clarke or Paul McGinley.

* TREME. 10 p.m. Sunday, HBO. ANYONE WHO thinks David Simon left journalism when he exited the Baltimore Sun might want to check out the new season of HBO's "Treme. " Or, for that matter, any or all of the five seasons of "The Wire. " Though it's this season of "Treme," Simon's post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans drama, that finally made me realize how effectively he's married TV drama and explanatory reporting to tell stories lots of us might not take the time to read in printed form, assuming those stories made it into print in the first place.

HBO's Boardwalk Empire , which returns for its third season on Sunday, is a classic mobster story about men with big egos and bigger guns facing off - in ways bloody and brutal - against other men with big guns and bigger egos. The Prohibition drama, starring Steve Buscemi as Atlantic City political boss and bootleg booze-trader Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, has more than its share of male aggression, gun-and-switchblade-generated gore, and late-night grue, but it doesn't pretend its characters live in a vacuum.