Per Montgomery County:
For Immediate Release: Friday, May 20, 2022
The winners of the Montgomery County Commission for Women’s (CFW) fifth annual Girl Power Contest have been selected. The Girl Power Contest ran from March 1 through 30 in celebration of Women’s History Month. This year, contestants addressed the following questions, “What do you see as the three biggest accomplishments women have achieved over the last 50 years? What three accomplishments do you believe would make the biggest impact over the next 50 years?”
CFW Commissioners and representatives from Montgomery County Public Libraries judged over 30 entries ranging from short stories to drawings based on creativity and content. Winners were selected from four categories: elementary, middle, high school, and adult. The 2022 winners and honorable mention recipients are:
Elementary
- First Place: Arya Krishnan, Submission: Letter
- Honorable Mention: Julia Liao, Submission: Letter
Middle School
- First Place: Nubian Lloyd, Submission: Letter
- Honorable Mention: Sara Benachenhou, Submission: Poem
High School
- First Place: Nuha Nadeem, Submission: Poem
- Honorable Mention: Yoksha Muruganantham, Submission: Poem
Adult
- First Place: Pamela Gordimer, Submission: Painting
- Honorable Mention: Natalie Jean, Submission: Song
The contest was sponsored by the Montgomery County Commission for Women, Montgomery County Public Libraries, and Friends of the Library. All contest winners will be featured on the Commission for Women’s website, social media and will receive a CFW Swag Bag. For more information about the Commission for Women, visit the website. You can also follow the Montgomery County Commission for Women on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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Per the Maryland Lottery:
An Ashton resident visited Maryland Lottery headquarters on April 29 to claim her $50,000 VaxCash 2.0 promotion prize from the April 12 drawing. The winner, Milagro Alfaro de Melgar, won the prize after being selected randomly from more than 2 million eligible Marylanders. Milagro qualified for the $50,000 prize after getting her COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters in Maryland. The 48-year-old Montgomery County woman was both surprised and happy when she received a call from the Maryland Health Department informing her that she had been selected. Although thrilled with the prize, the lucky winner told Lottery officials her reason for becoming vaccinated was simple: to protect herself and others.
“It helps save lives. Mine, as well as others – like my family,” she said. Milagro told Lottery officials that she is looking for a house and the $50,000 prize will go toward her dream of home ownership. “I’m also appreciative of the program and what it has done to encourage others to get the vaccine,” she said. Milagro is one of 11 VaxCash 2.0 winners so far, and one of 10 winners of $50,000. The promotion’s first drawing on Feb. 15 awarded a $500,000 prize to a Dundalk woman. On May 3, a single winner will be selected for a grand prize of $1 million.
The VaxCash 2.0 promotion, which was announced by Gov. Larry Hogan on Feb. 8, is awarding $2 million in cash prizes in weekly drawings from Feb. 15 through today, May 3. VaxCash 2.0 aims to incentivize Marylanders to get COVID-19 booster shots. All Maryland residents 18 and older who had received an initial shot(s) and a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine at eligible facilities in Maryland at any time were eligible to win. No registration or entry was needed.
VaxCash 2.0 follows last year’s successful collaboration between the Lottery and the Maryland Department of Health for the VaxCash Promotion that ran from May 25 through July 4, 2021, awarding $2 million in prizes to vaccinated Marylanders. For complete details about VaxCash 2.0, including the official rules and a list of frequently asked questions, visit the VaxCash 2.0 page.
Dogfish Head Alehouse, which opened its first location at 800 W. Diamond Ave in Gaithersburg in 2005, announced it has donated a combined $1,000,000 to charity over the past 17 years between its three locations.
In an email sent out on Thursday, the company said, “for over 17 years we have committed to supporting local causes, from schools, to veteran’s groups, to pet rescue, to families in need, plus many more. With our latest and last fundraiser at our Falls Church Alehouse we hit a milestone of which we are very proud: $1,000,000.
We are proud of our staff for being enthusiastic advocates for local causes and equally proud of our Falls Church, Fairfax and Gaithersburg communities for making this happen. Our Fairfax and Gaithersburg Alehouses have more fundraisers scheduled for the remainder of this year.” You can view a list of upcoming charity events here.
Dogfish Head Alehouses, which are owned and operated independent from the Dogfish Head brewery in Milton, DE through a licensing agreement, announced recently that it will be closing its Falls Church, VA location at 6220 Leesburg Pike in the Seven Corners Shopping Center. The restaurant says it was unable to come to terms with the property owner when it came time to renew its lease. The last day of service will be on May 15. The Dogfish Alehouse locations at 800 W. Diamond Ave in Gaithersburg and 13041 Lee Jackson Memorial Hwy in Fairfax, VA will remain open.
A Gaithersburg man is $30,000 richer after purchasing a scratch-off ticket from Brighton Beer & Wine at 225 Muddy Branch Rd in Gaithersburg.
Full details from the Maryland Lottery below:
A Montgomery County dad is planning to pack up his wife and children for a long-awaited family trip to Disney World after he won $30,000 on a Peppermint Payout! scratch-off.
The lucky winner, who decided to call himself “Mr. CDS” for publicity purposes, bought his winning instant ticketing several weeks ago at Brighton Beer & Wine in Gaithersburg. The 33-year-old said the only reason he purchased the $3 game was because his co-workers are regular Lottery players.
A father of two with a third child on the way, the Gaithersburg resident purchased four instant tickets one day and spread them out on the dashboard of his car. Those games sat on his dashboard for weeks before he finally got around to playing them.
According to “Mr. CDS,” every time he buys scratch-offs, he rubs his hand over his instant tickets and says “This is gonna be my ticket.” Although meant as an inside joke with his co-workers, his words rang true this time!
The infrequent player, who is originally from El Salvador, and his wife just purchased a new house and a new car. The next item on their list was a family trip to Disney World, but they had to postpone those plans. However, with this $30,000 top-prize win, they can start planning again.
Brighton Beer & Wine also has some fun money coming its way. The Montgomery County liquor store located at 255 Muddy Branch Road earns a $300 bonus from the Lottery for selling a $30,000 top-prize winning scratch-off.
Radio station Hot 99.5 (WIHT FM) is running a tournament to determine “Who is the best high school in the DMV?”
Wheaton High School is currently facing off against Osbourn Park High School (Manassas, VA) in the final round.
Voting is currently taking place in Hot 99.5’s Instagram page’s stories. The winning school will be awarded with $1,000.
Northwest (Germantown), Quince Orchard (Gaithersburg), James Hubert Blake (Cloverly), Bethesda Chevy Chase, and Paint Branch (Burtonsville) were all eliminated in earlier rounds of the tournament.
Hot 99.5 (WIHT) broadcasts out of the IHeartMedia studios at 1801 Rockville Pike in Rockville.
Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, VA was the 2021 tournament winner.
DC101, another iHeartMedia station that also broadcasts from the Rockville studio, is currently running a “Best Taco in the DMV” tournament. Tacos Don Perez (Glemont) is currently in the final four.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CbpvvflL7YM/
On Friday, March 25, the Montgomery County Police Department team participated in the annual Special Olympics Maryland Police Plunge. The event takes place each year at Sandy Point State Park on the Chesapeake Bay.
According to organizers, the first Police Plunge took place in 2012 and raised over $100,000. Since then, agencies have raised over $2 million dollars. Learn more at www.plungemd.com
Per MCPD:
Pictured (from left to right): Police Cadet Gianni Onorati, Sergeant Robert Cook, Officer Barbara Natoli, Detective Krista Kennedy, Officer Kelly Cox, Officer George Stephens and Captain Ian Clark
Montgomery County Police Department is turning 100! To learn more about the events surrounding the 100th Anniversary, visit: https://www.mcpd100.org/
https://twitter.com/mcpnews/status/1508828648677294091
The United States Senate passed the “Sunshine Protection Act” by unanimous consent today. The bill would make Daylight Saving permanent and put an end to having to change your clocks twice a year. The bill will now need to pass through the House, before going to President Biden. According to the H.R.69 – Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, this bill makes daylight savings time the new, permanent standard time. States with areas exempt from daylight savings time may choose the standard time for those areas.
The bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act was introduced by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ed Markey (D-MA). Daylight Saving Time began in the U.S. in 1918 and was extended by four weeks in 2007. Daylight saving time began this year this past Sunday, March 13, and lasts until November, 6.
The US Senate passes bill to make #DaylightSavingTime permanent year-round.
The bipartisan legislation dubbed the “Sunshine Protection Act,” sponsored by Senator @marcorubio & co-sponsored by @SenWhitehouse and others pic.twitter.com/R1G2QRWACR
— Los Angeles Magazine (@LAmag) March 15, 2022
Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, grew up in Kensington. He is the youngest of five brothers born to William and Jayne Plank. His father was a prominent real estate developer who passed away in 1993. A local project of his was the Al Marah subdivision off River Road, just off of exit 39 on the Beltway. His mother was the mayor of Kensington for 8 years, from 1974-1982. She went on to direct the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs at the United States Department of State under President Ronald Reagan, and was a real estate broker until the early 2000s.
Plank grew up playing youth football with the Maplewood Sports Association (photo below). He even featured a Maplewood team in an Under Armour commercial. While growing up in Kensington, Plank has mentioned that one of his favorite places to eat was Continental– a family owned and operated restaurant that has been serving the Kensington community since 1957. Plank attended Georgetown Preparatory School, but left the school due to poor academic performance and behavioral issues. According to Forbes, he was thrown out of private high school after failing two classes and for his part in what Forbes described as a “drunken brawl” with football players from Georgetown University.
He went on to graduate from another Catholic school, St. John’s College High School, in 1990. While at St. John’s, Plank first met his future wife, Desiree Jacqueline “D.J.” Guerzon of Potomac, when he went out with one of her classmates from the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda. The future couple even went to prom in the same car, but with different dates. Their paths crossed again at the University of Maryland where they began dating and eventually married.
After graduating from St. John’s, Plank played football at Fork Union Military Academy for a year, in an attempt to catch the eye of a NCAA Division I school. He was not recruited by any top-tier collegiate football programs, but decided to attend the University of Maryland (College Park), where he was able to walk on to the football team there. He graduated in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business, which he supports to this day with major contributions.
The idea that led to Under Armour was sparked while playing for the Maryland Terrapins; Plank said he was the “sweatiest guy on the football field” in an interview with Fortune. The cotton t-shirts he was wearing were unable to keep him dry and comfortable, so he searched for a material that would wick the sweat from his body, so after graduating he searched for synthetic materials that would keep athletes dry. While at University of Maryland, Plank launched Cupid’s Valentine, a seasonal business selling roses on Valentine’s Day. Cupid’s Valentine earned him $3,000. He used that money, credit cards, and a Small Business Administration loan, to launch his business– trying several prototypes before deciding on the one he wanted to use.
Plank originally wanted to call his new sportswear company ‘Heart.’ He was unable to trademark the name, so he went with ‘Body Armor’, which he was also unable to trademark. It wasn’t until his brother asked him “How’s that company you’re working on … Under Armor?” that the name he ended up using stuck. Why did he use the British spelling if the word “Armour”? He came up with a phone number, 888-4ARMOUR, that the felt was more compelling than using 888-44ARMOR, according to Business Insider.
Plank initially ran the business from his grandmother’s townhouse in Georgetown. According to The Washington Post, Under Armour began in Plank’s grandmother’s house on the corner of 35th and O Street in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. He lived upstairs, had the sales office on the ground floor, and kept all the inventory in the basement. Under Armour’s first shirt was the #0037, which Plank sold from his car.
He also asked his former teammates to try on the shirts, claiming that his alternative to a cottons-shirt would enhance their performance on the field. He would send his friends who went on to play professionally shirts so that they can pass them on to teammates. His first big team sale was to Georgia Tech. In 1996, Plank finished his first year selling shirts with $17,000 in sales, per the Baltimore Business Journal.
A turning point for him came late in 1999, when Plank used nearly all of Under Armour’s money, and employees agreed to go without pay for a few weeks, so the company could take out a $25,000 advertisement in ESPN The Magazine. The ad resulted in $1 million in direct sales for the following year, and athletes and teams began buying the product, according to The Washington Post. Plank’s company reached $1 billion annual revenue for the first time in 2010, and Plank became a billionaire in 2011, when his net worth was estimated at $1.05 billion. Plank currently has an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion.
As CEO, Plank oversaw a company that generated $5 billion in annual revenue and employed about 15,800 people as of December 31, 2017. Plank announced his departure as CEO in October 2019, and was succeeded on January 1, 2020, by Under Armour COO Patrik Frisk. Under Armour edged out Adidas to come in #2 behind Nike with U.S. apparel and footwear sales of $1.2 billion (Adidas came in at $1.1 billion) after a 20% increase in sales compared to a 23% decrease by Adidas according to a Sterne Agee report Friday citing sales figures from SportScanInfo in September of 2021.
Featured photo courtesy of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Kiki Rice, the No. 2 women’s basketball recruit in the Class of 2022, has been named the 2022 Naismith Girls’ High School Player of the Year.
Rice, a 5’11 Bethesda resident, has helped lead Sidwell Friends to an undefeated record and #1 ranking in the nation. Named for the inventor of the game, the Naismith award is considered among the highest—if not the highest—award in high school and college basketball. “My teammates and my coaches played a huge role in me getting this award,” Rice said in an article on the Sidwell Friends website. “It’s an individual award, but someone who isn’t on a great team and who isn’t being pushed every day is not going to win this award.”
As a freshman in 2018-19, she started in all 20 games played and averaged 21.7 ppg., 11.0 rpg., 7.5 apg., 2.6 spg. and 1.4 bpg. to help her team to a 20-6 record and the state tournament semifinals. She was named the D.C. Gatorade Player of the Year, and hasn’t played a full season until this year due to Covid restrictions.
As a member of the 2019 USA U16 National Team, Rice averaged 7.2 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game to help the USA to a 6-0 record and gold medal June 16-22 in Puerto Aysen, Chile.
Her father, John Rice, played basketball at Yale, her mother, Andrea Rice played tennis at Yale, and her cousin Allan Houston played basketball at the University of Tennessee and in the NBA for the New York Knicks.
Rice has chosen to continue her education and basketball career at UCLA next year.
🏆 Player of the Year 🏆
Congratulations to @kiki_rice0 on being named our 2022 @jerseymikes Naismith Girls’ High School Player of the Year‼️
The @UCLAWBB commit joins her Head Coach, Tamika Dudley, from @SFSQuakers as 2022 Naismith Award winners! pic.twitter.com/G3liOblpcM
— Naismith Awards (@NaismithTrophy) March 4, 2022
The CBS sitcom ‘Ghosts’ debuted in October of last year and was recently renewed for a second season. Coincidentally, it stars two actors who graduated from Wootton High School in Rockville. The show is about a married couple in New York, Samantha and Jay, who believe that their dreams have come true when they inherit a beautiful country home. They soon find that it is falling apart and inhabited by ghosts who died on the mansion’s grounds and are now bound to the area until they can reach the afterlife. Jay cannot see or hear the ghosts, but Samantha, after having a near-death experience, can.
Jay, the male lead, is portrayed by Utkarsh Ambudkar. Ambudkar was born in nearby Baltimore, but was raised in Rockville while his parents worked at NIH in Bethesda. The 38 year old actor graduated from Wootton High School and is well known for his roles as a VJ for MTV Desi, Donald in Pitch Perfect, Rishi in the Mindy Project, Skatch in Mulan, and more. Below you’ll see Ambudkar’s rap from the 2020 Oscars.
Actor Utkarsh Ambudkar (@UTKtheINC) gave us all a little update at the Oscars last night. He graduated from Wootton!
He is well known as Donald from Pitch Perfect and Rishi (Mindy’s younger brother) from The Mindy Project, as well as other projects. pic.twitter.com/Oh08yI4SMx
— The MoCoShow (MCS) (@TheMoCoShow) February 10, 2020
Richie Moriarty portrays one of the ghosts, Pete Martino, who was a girl Scouts leader who died in 1985 from being shot through the neck with an arrow. He moved to Rockville with his family at the age of 5 and attended Fallsmead Elementary School. The 41 year old actor also graduated from Wootton High School. He can also be seen in What We Do in the Shadows on FX, in the Netflix hits Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, House of Cards, season seven of Orange Is the New Black, and more. Below you’ll see Moriarty in his first grade talent show at Fallsmead Elementary School in Rockville:
Isaac Applebaum has made it to the Jeopardy! College finals. He is a junior at Stanford University, majoring in Computational Biology. Applebaum is from Bethesda and graduated from Richard Montgomery High School in 2019, where he also played on the baseball team and ran cross country. Applebaum is also a musician, a jazz pianist, which he says is a big part of his identity.
In the first quarterfinals matchup of the two-week Jeopardy College Championship, Applebaum pulled off a comeback win to defeat Gus Guszkowski of Dartmouth and Catherine Zhang of Cornell. He won by correctly identifying Charles Torrey as the abolitionist thought to have given the Underground Railroad its name during final Jeopardy.
He did it again in the semifinals when he was $1,800 behind first place at the end of the Double Jeopardy round before identifying “irises” as what a 1525 textbook on anatomy states is being so different of colours and could also be called rainbows.
In an interview with ABC7, he talked about what he missed the most about the DMV. “One thing I miss about the DMV is seasons. Because in the Bay Area, the weather is the same every single day. You wake up, you go outside, it’s like 50, 60 degrees, it’s sunny, there are a couple of clouds and then in winter, it rains sometimes, but no snow. It’s not like fall. The weather is kind of the same. And I like that, as someone who has to bike to class and be outside, but also when I was home over winter break, we had these beautiful snow days. And we were all just like, go outside and walk around and that there’s nothing like that in the Bay Area. So I miss the snow in the winter. I miss all the leaves changing colors in the fall. I do not necessarily miss all the rain that we get in the DC area.”
Applebaum has the opportunity to win $250,000 become Jeopardy! National College Champion if he were to win on Tuesday, February 22nd.
Jess Agyepong, a Paint Branch High School alumna, also participated in Jeopardy! College. She’s a senior majoring in biology at Howard University and risked it all when she went to Final Jeopardy tied for first in her quarterfinal matchup. Unfortunately, she came up short in a valiant effort.
