Aquatic Club

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- It comes down to this for Beth Botsford: She needs to strengthen her shoulders.The North Baltimore Aquatic Club star came up short in the 200-meter backstroke in the Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships last night, finishing fourth because she slowed in the last 100 as a result of shoulder soreness stretching back to early summer."

William Paca House, 186 Prince George St., will be open until 8 p.m. each Saturday this month.The extended hours will offer visitors the opportunity to take a guided tour of the new exhibit, "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In," and browse in the museum shop. Visitors will be taken through the restored 18th century mansion by volunteers to experience the variety of goods imported by the bustling port of Annapolis during the 1760s and 1770s.Imported items included spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, mace, sugar candy, teas, mustard, salad oils and lemons.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- This wasn't what Beth Botsford had in mind when she came to the Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships.A thunderstorm knocked out the lights -- three times -- and, before the 16-year-old from Timonium was to swim in the 100-meter backstroke final, the bulkhead broke during the preceding event, the men's 100 freestyle.But the event finally began at the opposite end of the pool and, when it was over, Botsford had finished second to Lea Maurer to clinch a spot on the U.S. team that will compete in the world championships in January in Australia.

Olympic champion Beth Botsford is going to pass on this one, but Baltimore still will be well represented at the Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships, which start a five-day run Monday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.The North Baltimore Aquatic Club is sending five swimmers and UMBC's Retriever Aquatic Club three, while former Calvert Hall and Knights of Columbus-Orchards star Brad Francis, a Southern Cal senior, will compete for Trojan Swimming in three...

A 17-year-old swimmer from Uniontown will be the first from the Green Terror Aquatic Club to compete in the U.S. Swimming Association's junior national competition.Marie P. Tomarelli, a junior at Francis Scott Key High School, qualified in the 200-yard butterfly at a March 3 meet at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Junior and senior nationals are scheduled in August in Alabama."I knew I could do it, but it was a relief to get it over with," Marie said.She qualified for the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2: 07.98.

Notre Dame Prep's Carrie Kroll (left) and Dulaney's Bianca Jay were incorrectly identified in a photo that appeared Sunday. The Sun regrets the error.Carrie Kroll seems lost in a pinch-me kind of daydream when she talks about her whirlwind summer.Between mid-May and the end of August, Kroll rose from being a better-than-average, high-school cross-country runner to being a world-class junior triathlete.On Aug. 26, she finished 17th at the Junior World Triathlon Championships in Cleveland.Just a few months earlier, Kroll could not have imagined herself ++ in such elite company.

Murray Stephens will be very much in his element when he arrives in Atlanta this week. He has coached Olympic swimmers for the better part of the past two decades, and his appointment as an assistant coach for the 1996 Games was long overdue.His name brings nods of recognition throughout the swimming world, and yet he is relatively unknown here in his hometown -- even though his Meadowbrook Aquatic and Fitness Center might be the premier club swimming facility on the East Coast.This is the O-zone, after all, and soon to be in an NFL frenzy, too. But before the Orioles head down the stretch and the Ravens kick off their first season at Memorial Stadium, Stephens and two of his swimmers will try to put Baltimore in the international spotlight.

ATLANTA -- Whitney Phelps knew midway through the race that she wasn't going to beat Susan O'Neill last night in the women's 200-meter butterfly at the Pan Pacific Championships.Phelps didn't.But on a night when the 22-year-old Australian challenged the sport's longest-standing record, the 15-year-old from Towson showed that she is capable of butterflying with the best in the world.As the crowd at Georgia Tech's Aquatics Center cheered O'Neill's valiant attempt to break Mary T. Meagher's 14-year-old world record, Phelps tired a bit over the final 50 meters and was nudged out for a silver medal by Japan's Mika Haruna.

The North Baltimore Aquatic Club's Beth Botsford won the 200-meter backstroke in the Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships last night in Minneapolis.Botsford, 13, a Garrison Forest School eighth grader, broke the national 13-14 age group record in winning the event in 2 minutes, 13.53 seconds. Botsford will also swim in the 100 backstroke, 100 butterly and 200 individual medley in the five-day meet that ends Saturday."This wasn't that much of a surprise, because Beth had done a 2:16 last year," said NBAC coach Murray Stephens, whose team is defending its national women's title.

Whitney Metzler finished second in the 400-meter individual medley and Brittany White was eighth in the event as the North Baltimore Aquatic Club took a substantial lead in its defense of the women's title in the Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships last night in Minneapolis.Metzler, who completed the race in 4 minutes, 48.16 seconds, finished eight seconds ahead of White.The NBAC 400 freestyle relay team of Beth Botsford, (who won the 200 backstroke Wednesday), Melinda Rehm, Metzler and Kelly McPherson took seventh place in 4:00.

Swimming North Baltimore Aquatic Club joins Olympic program North Baltimore Aquatic Club and Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team were named Professional and Post Grad Training Centers by the U.S. Olympic Committee. They are the second and third clubs to join the program; SwimMAC in Charlotte, N.C., was the first to receive the designation, in 2006. The USOC will provide financial and other support to transform the clubs into comprehensive, state-of-the-art training and support environments for elite teams of prospective Olympic swimmers.

Swimming NBAC's Morris qualifies for U.S. team at worlds A strong U.S. nationals for North Baltimore Aquatic Club continued Saturday night, when 18-year-old Brennan Morris surprised everyone, including himself, by finishing second in the 1,500-meter freestyle, earning a spot on the United States team headed to the world championships in Rome in two weeks. Morris, who moved to Baltimore with his family three years ago from Lewisburg, Pa., lowered his career-best time by 20 seconds in the preliminaries Friday morning and then shaved an additional four seconds off that time in the final a day later, touching the wall in 15 minutes, 13.47 seconds.

NBA playoffs Bryant's late 3-pointer helps Lakers win, 103-97, go up 2-1 Kobe Bryant's three-pointer over J.R. Smith gave Los Angeles a one-point lead with just over a minute left and sparked the Lakers to a 103-97 victory over the host Denver Nuggets for a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference finals. Bryant, who scored 41 points, went 5-for-6 on free throws to ice it after his three-pointer gave Los Angeles a 96-95 lead. Carmelo Anthony (Towson Catholic) scored 21 points but just three after halftime for Denver, which lost at home for the first time since March 9. He was 4-for-13 in his worst performance of the postseason.

Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps said last night that he is starting a new endeavor involving a pool he and coach Bob Bowman are purchasing in Baltimore. "My goal is to change the sport of swimming," Phelps told NBC's Nightly News anchor Brian Williams in an interview broadcast last night. "Bob and I are starting up a new business back in Baltimore with the pool that we just bought, so we're going to make some adjustments and see what we can do to take that sport to the next level."

BEIJING - Michael Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman, has an expression he likes to use when his swimmers are exhausted, their muscles are burning and their painful workouts are not yet complete: Keep putting money in the bank. Sacrifice now, the phrase implies, and you'll be able to make a withdrawal later, when needed during competition. The 23-year-old swimmer from Rodgers Forge has heard it hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times over the years. "I guess I put a lot of money in the bank over the last four years, and we went through pretty much every penny," Phelps said yesterday, just hours after winning his eighth gold medal, wrapping up the most dominating Olympic performance in history.

The home of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club doesn't look like much. Cars overflow the parking lot and spill onto the grass in the summer. Chubby-legged children and haggard parents splash haphazardly around the outdoor pool, which could belong to any community center in any American suburb. Inside, fitness freaks pedal and pump on exercise machines overlooking more swimming lanes. The only signs of anything unusual are the Beijing 2008 flags that hang above the entry hall. They hint at the reality that in 2008, Baltimore is the cradle of American swimming.

OMAHA, Neb. -- The pieces of Katie Hoff's aquatic Chinese puzzle are beginning to come together. One stroke strengthens another. Distances seem to shrink. A skill honed gets her closer to her goal: the starting blocks in Beijing. For Michael Phelps, it's a case of tightening his Alpha male grip on the competition so that his mere presence puts doubts in their minds. Last night at the Mutual of Omaha Swimvitational, the final in the Toyota Grand Prix series, Hoff and Phelps got comfortable in the venue where in three weeks they will compete for spots on the Olympic team.

Michael Phelps has always said he'd be willing to follow his coach, Bob Bowman, just about anywhere. After the Beijing Olympics, it looks as if Phelps will be following him right back to Baltimore. Bowman -- Phelps' personal coach since he was 11 years old -- resigned yesterday as coach at the University of Michigan to take over as CEO of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, and said that Phelps will be coming with him to live and train, once again, in Charm City. The pair has been in Ann Arbor since 2004, with Bowman serving as Wolverines coach as well as guiding Club Wolverine, the club Phelps swims for. The move won't take place until after the Summer Games in August, although Phelps, 22, has already purchased a place to live in Baltimore.

CHICAGO --With his best swimmer poised to go to the Beijing Olympics in four months and a stable of younger athletes in the pipeline for 2012 and beyond, Paul Yetter has an eye for talent and the ability to nurture it. Yesterday, the Anne Arundel County native was honored by the U.S. Olympic Committee as its Developmental Coach of the Year. Yetter, 32, was selected over finalists from ice hockey, taekwondo, diving and women's basketball. The award was first issued in 1996. His resume includes coaching the 2007 USOC Sportswoman of the Year, Towson's Katie Hoff, and guiding the U.S. women's squad at the Pan American Games last summer to 14 gold medals in 16 events.

Steven Joel "Stevie" Hansen, a sixth-grader who won numerous awards for swimming, died of brain and spinal cord cancer Tuesday at his Timonium home. He was 11. Born in Towson, he was an experienced swimmer by the time he had graduated from Baltimore County's Pot Spring Elementary School in Baltimore County. "He crawled into the ocean when he was 9 months old," said his mother, Elizabeth Davenport Hansen, who said that as a 2-year-old, he persuaded her to let him dive off the board at the Springlake Swim Club.