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ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY ‘Ordinary Days’ follows lives of four New Yorkers. A-11
The Gazette GERMANTOWN | POOLESVILLE | BOYDS
DAILY UPDATES ONLINE www.gazette.net
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
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Boyds, Rockville jails add security, inmate services
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Additions will help make up cuts from recession BY
SARAH SCULLY STAFF WRITER
Five new hires included in the county’s newly approved 2015 budget will bolster security at Montgomery County’s two jails in Boyds and Rockville, address the growing issue of mental health among offenders, and improve accounting, record keeping and processing. The county Department of Correction and Rehabilitation’s budget increased by 6.8 percent, in the 2015 budget, mostly to cover standard pay and benefit increases, according to Department of Correction and Rehabilitation Director Arthur Wallenstein. About $340,000 will go to the
new hires. Two officers will be hired for perimeter security at the Boyds jail at 22880 Whelan Lane, Wallenstein said. “We lost our evening and night perimeter security patrol at Boyds during the recession as part of mandatory budget cuts. We are restoring full-time security patrol on our perimeter,” Wallenstein said. A psychiatric community health nurse will also join the department. “Mental health is our most serious challenge in corrections. We have a growing number of seriously mentally ill prisoners,” Wallenstein explained. He said that mental health treatment is not only for those incarcerated, but also for offenders of minor crimes. Other new positions in-
See JAILS, Page A-10
Students present Patriarch has been centerpiece for 40 years mural to Discovery Sports Center TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Gene Lowery of the Upper Montgomery Athletic Club baseball league operates the concession stand during games on May 22 on the Edward U. Taylor Science Materials Center grounds in Boyds.
BY
SARAH SCULLY
STAFF WRITER
Gene Lowery has run the Upper Montgomery Athletic Club baseball league in Boyds for nearly 40 years. He’s the league’s president, but he’s best known around the fields for the cheeseburgers and egg sandwiches he sells from the snack shack at least six days a week. On top of the contracting company he runs with his son Brad Lowery — Lowery Construction — he puts in about 60 hours a week to keep the league running and feed hungry players, parents and siblings. “He’s the guy who does everything out here, the father of the league so to speak,” Coach Ike Brenner said. Lowery, 73, joined the league in 1975, coaching then 9-year-old Brad’s team. Within a few years, he became president of the league. At the time, it used one field
behind the old Edward U. Taylor School on White Ground Road. Ten years ago, the school closed. Lowery said he negotiated a deal with the county school system to let the league build four more fields and maintain them without paying to use the fields. Since then, he and Brad have built a pavilion and dug-out covers there. They built the snack shack about 20 years ago. Boys run up to the red shack, $3 in hand, to grab a Diet Coke for Mom and a packet of Big League Chew. Their sisters pick out Skittles and take them to the playground to gossip. Pings of bats hitting balls ring across the fields around the shack. Lowery waits behind the counter in his red league shirt, white-grey hair combed back, beard trimmed, while one player after another is stumped by which flavor of Gatorade to choose. The menu, handwritten in marker on
the side of a white refrigerator, offers pickles for 50 cents, hot dogs for $2 and Super Bubble for 5 cents a piece. Lowery estimates he makes about 1,000 burgers during the 40 or so games each week. Trophies from Cal Ripken tournaments stand prominently beside the counter. “He’s a giver, that’s for sure,” said Chris McKee, who has coached his four sons’ teams the past seven years. “He’s just tireless around here.” Typically, Lowery rises at 3 or 4 a.m., depending on what time he went to sleep. He sleeps for exactly five hours and wakes up without an alarm clock every day to have breakfast and maybe scrub pans from the snack shack that he didn’t get to the night before. He gets to work around 7 a.m. By 3 p.m., he’s on his way to the fields,
See PATRIARCH, Page A-10
Each drew what ‘Sports Meets the Arts’ means to them n
BY
SARAH SCULLY STAFF WRITER
Downhill skiing and skateboarding aren’t traditional scenes at the Discovery Sports Center at the Germantown SoccerPlex, but a new mural by local elementary school students shows all different types of sporting activities and will decorate the wall here.
The fourth grade class at Sparks Matsunaga Elementary School in Germantown created a “Sports Meets the Arts” mural to hang in the Discovery Sports Center at the Germantown SoccerPlex. Wednesday will be the first time the 150 fourth graders see their work put together as one mural. Its unveiling will be during the school’s field day. The soccerplex donated field space so that the entire school of about 950 students can participate
See MURAL, Page A-10
Northwest High Jagbotics team takes on robot battles Group looking to add sponsors n
BY
VIRGINIA TERHUNE STAFF WRITER
Designing and building machines to do battle with each other in teams of three is challenging, not to mention chaotic once the games begin. “It was like a mix of basketball and soccer played with robots,” said Greg Vogl, a mentor with Northwest High’s fledgling robotics team, the Jagbotics.
NEWS
ATHLETIC CLUB ON THE MOVE
Poolesville location moves from old space to West Willard Road.
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“ ... and with a little football thrown in,” added Northwest engineering teacher Mike Ames. Founded in 2012, the Jagbotics competed in the FIRST [For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology] games in April 2013 in Baltimore and won the Rookie Inspiration Award. They competed again this year in early April at the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, and although they didn’t win, they learned a good lesson about rallying after a setback. At the last minute, a judge ruled that the bumpers on their cage-like
robot didn’t meet specifications, even though the bumpers had been cleared before, and the team had to quickly regroup. “It was a lesson in perseverance — you don’t give up,” said Vogl. “You have to put emotion aside and get the job done.” Named after the school’s Jaguar mascot, the team was founded with the help of a $5,000 grant from the Montgomery College engineering program. Several other high schools in the county also have robotics clubs, including Clarksburg, Poolesville, Montgomery Blair and Kennedy.
SPORTS
DRIVING TO THE HOOP St. Andrew’s hopes to increase exposure by launching boys basketball summer league.
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Northwest’s team offers students hands-on experience in designing, building and programming machines. “It’s a [real-world] application — it’s not a workshop or a lesson or a textbook,” Ames said. “It fills in what you only learn by doing something physical.” Ames volunteers his time and runs the club with the help of two other volunteer mentors — Vogl, who has been working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] in Gaithers-
See ROBOT, Page A-10
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Northwest High School junior Jahanzeb Ghauri (left) and sophomore Sam Schrantz, both 16 and from Germantown, work on disassembling a robot they and their Jagbotics robotics team built.
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