Gym

Gunshots fired through a door at Edmondson-Westside High School yesterday evening during a basketball game with Dunbar High School prompted the cancellation of the game and sent several hundred spectators home early, city police said.No injuries were reported, and no arrests were made, police said.Several fights had broken out during the game between fans, and school police had ordered several youths out of the building.Outside, youths began fighting, and at least one pulled a handgun and fired several shots through the plastic window of a door that opened onto a hallway leading to the gym, police said.

•Ellicott City residents Bernie and Connie Dancel and the Dancel Family Foundation recently presented $250,000 to the Howard Hospital Foundation to help fund Howard County General Hospital's cardiopulmonary gym at the hospital's Outpatient Center. The gym is part of HCGH's $105 million campus development plan. The gym is designed for cardiac rehabilitation patients and features a cushioned walking track and high-tech digital exercise equipment, including state-of-the-art treadmills and bikes and fully equipped locker rooms.

Northeast volleyball coach Otis Long said this week he has resigned after three years because of a lack of support for the program from the school's athletic department."

Mack Lewis swings open the rusty gate of his gym on the corner of Broadway and Eager and slowly climbs the 20 creaky stairs to the converted dance hall that has served as a proving ground and second home for thousands of Baltimore boxers during the past 50 years.After some quick math, Lewis estimates he has made this climb some 13,000 times."When I first came here, I used to run up the stairs," recalled Lewis, 75, a retired Internal Revenue Service clerk. "Now, I'm just thankful I can still make it to the top."

The boys basketball game between Digital Harbor and No. 11 Lake Clifton on Friday has been moved. The Rams were supposed to host Friday's game, but because of water damage in the Digital Harbor gym, the Lakers will host the game instead. Friday's JV game is set to tip at 3:45 p.m. at Lake Clifton, while the varsity game will follow at 5:15.

St. Paul's School in Brooklandville broke ground yesterday for a $6.6 million athletic center, the second of three projects in the school's capital campaign.The new athletic center, adjacent to Kinsolving Gymnasium, will have three basketball courts, wrestling rooms, locker and training rooms and a fitness center. After construction is completed in May next year, it will be joined to the older gym by a structure that will form the entrance and lobby of the new building.The combined 47,000-square-foot facility, expected to be finished by August next year, will have space for three basketball games to be played simultaneously.

BEST GYM: Canton Club Health & Fitness Dedicated to those who want to live their fitness lives to the fullest, the Canton Club Health & Fitness gym offers a variety of classes, free weights and cardiovascular training that are both typical and outside of the box. Boasting state-of-the-art workout equipment and a picturesque view of the Inner Harbor, the gym has only been at its current location for four years but has gained a steady following...

There is no more popular -- or lucrative -- sport these days than professional basketball. Yet Maryland taxpayers are providing the Washington Bullets -- a team that doesn't even intend to play future games in the Free State -- with a nearly $100,000 subsidy.The Bullets hold their practices at McKeldin Gymnasium on the campus of Bowie State University. They use the building at their pleasure. Except for Bowie's men and women's basketball team members, no other student gets to use the facility.

For more than half a century, six nights a week, Mack Lewis climbed the 20 creaky stairs to the converted dance hall on the corner of Eager and Broadway where he taught thousands of young men to box and counseled them on life. The gym later moved to a vacant Rite Aid in the nearby Church Square Mall on Bond Street, and Mr. Lewis' supporters worked to have it turned into a state-of-the-art 4,200-square-foot gym. But nothing about how Lewis approached his work changed. Mr. Lewis, who died Friday night at Good Samaritan Hospital at age 92, trained contenders and pretenders, fathers, sons and grandsons.

Josie Mehta, a retired registered nurse who had worked at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, died Sept. 1 of cancer at her Nottingham home. She was 61. The daughter of an insurance man and a homemaker, Josie Dela Cruz was born and raised in Virac, the Philippines, where she graduated from high school. After earning her nursing degree in 1972 from the University of Santo Thomas in the Philippines, she came to Baltimore the next year when she took a nursing job at the old Church Home Hospital.