Freestyle

Severna Park used the talents of the Lloyd sisters and the depth of its boys to sweep the Class 4A-3A team titles at Saturday's state championship swimming meet at Maryland's Eppley Recreation Center. Sarah and Emily Lloyd are twin sisters who played a big role in helping the Falcons score 331 points to beat Urbana (300) for their third state title in four years. Emily Lloyd set meet records while winning the 50-yard freestyle (23.16 seconds) and the 200 freestyle (1:52.69). She also swam on the record-setting 200 freestyle relay team (1:39.

The junior swam four All-America times and set three pool records while leading the Dons to their 17th straight swimming title last weekend. That means he has one of the top 130 times in the nation this year in the 200 freestyle (1 minute, 42.05 seconds), 100 freestyle (46.45 seconds), 200 freestyle relay (1:25.15) and the 400 freestyle relay (3:07.28). Porter, 16, began swimming for the Loyola Blakefield Aquatics club team at age 8 and hasn't stopped. "He's very good and very, very, very smart," Dons coach Keith Schertle said.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. - -The most popular athlete at the freestyle skiing World Cup last weekend wasn't X Games gold medalist and four-time Olympian Daron Rahlves. Or Jeret "Speedy" Peterson, the aerialist with the Hurricane, the hardest jump in the sport. No, the most sought-after autograph belonged to Errol Kerr, the one-man ski-cross team from Jamaica. "You're catching this, aren't you?" asked Kerr as he scrawled his name on the sleeves of $300 ski jackets and smiled for camera-phone portraits.

When the weekend began, just one-third of the 18 Olympic slots had been filled by members of the U.S. freestyle skiing team. Although the entire squad won't be nominated until Tuesday, the roster picks have been made a lot easier for team officials after four days of World Cup competition against much of the same international field that will be in Vancouver next month. But the sorting-out process also includes the sobering realization that the path to the podium, in some cases, is blocked by juggernauts.

Cadet and Junior Wrestling 15 All-America awards at nationals is state record The Maryland national wrestling team brought home 15 individual All-America awards from the Cadet and Junior National Championships on Sunday in Fargo, N.D., the highest number in state history. Tyler Goodwin (119), Frank Goodwin (125), Bubba Scheffel (152; Southern-Garrett) and Karl Green (285; Mount St. Joseph) were double All-Americans. Tyler Goodwin made the cadet national finals in Greco-Roman competition and placed eighth in freestyle.

ROME - -The Great Stroke Experiment is over. By mutual decision, Michael Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman, are putting that relatively new windmill, straight-arm stroke - designed for sprinting - right back on the shelf. "It actually was [mutual]. It's funny, as often happens, he came out and said the same thing," Bowman said this morning at the world championships. "He said, 'I don't think this is working.' I said, 'You're right.' Experiment failed. Next." The Baltimore swimmer told Bowman that on Sunday night, almost immediately after his opening leg in the winning 400-meter freestyle relay.

ROME - -This all started with an equipment malfunction in the morning relay and ended with the favored French sprinters wilting again, giving Michael Phelps and friends another riveting victory in the 400-meter freestyle relay. In between, there were world records tumbling on Day 1. Six fell Sunday night, including Ian Thorpe's 400-meter freestyle, as well as the oldest women's mark on the books, the 100 butterfly. "All the athletes in the back are saying it's crazy. Unfortunately, you have to wear these suits to keep up with everyone, but it'll be great when they go back and you'll really see who the swimmers are," said Dara Torres, who was on the U.S. women's 400 freestyle relay, which took fourth.

He tinkered with his stroke and exhausted his muscles in the weight room. He grew a mustache. He won some races and lost a few. He just missed out on grabbing the world record he wants but doesn't own. All that, however interesting or mundane, was merely part of a three-month dress rehearsal for swimmer Michael Phelps. The real opening act - the one likely to provide the first snippet of drama to his return to competitive swimming - begins Tuesday at the national championships in Indianapolis.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Michael Phelps couldn't hear it because he had his iPhone ear buds tucked in, but when he walked into the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center on Friday night for the 200-meter freestyle final, AC/DC's "Back in Black" was blaring over the loudspeakers. Though perhaps a bit cliche, it was still a mildly clever choice by the organizers of the Charlotte UltraSwim. Phelps was, after all, officially back, returning to competition for the first time since the Beijing Olympics.