Swim Team

When the Severna Park YMCA unexpectedly closed its center and its swimming pool in May, Nancy Eay didn't panic. She looked at her checkbook."I wanted to buy it, but I didn't have enough money," the 37-year-old Severna Park resident joked.The closing was a sad event for the community, Mrs. Eay said. But now, she and others who bemoaned the loss of one of Severna Park's most prized institutions can celebrate. Severna Park Swim Association Inc. has renovated and reopened the old YMCA pool and center at 623 Baltimore-Annapolis Blvd.

The Navy SEAL wannabes didn't notice him at first - the quiet, dark-haired man scaling the diving tower at their training tank in San Diego. He wasn't part of the SEALs' elite group, so how good an athlete could Austin Koth be? Koth sprang off the board, pirouetted in the air and pierced the water as he'd done years before on the swim team at Calvert Hall. Jaws dropped. "Sure, that happened once or twice," David Crawfoot Jr. said of Koth's acrobatics at the Naval Amphibious Base in California.

The Manchester Lions Club Swim Team is marking the end of its first summer season with a barbecue and awards ceremony tomorrow -- not to mention high hopes for next year.After completing her season on the Carroll County Family YMCA team, Kaitlin Bressler, 12, looked around for a summer team. When she couldn't find one in the area, her father, Dan Bressler, approached the Lions Club about using its pool, where the family had been members for years.Club officials liked the idea."Basically, the Lions Club is there to support the community," said Henry Hersh, chairman of the Lions Club pool committee.

Ramsey Bigham Mihavetz first became involved with the Bolton Hill Swim and Tennis Club as a 7-year-old summer swim-team competitor. Now, 26 years later, the mother of two young sons is still drawn to the pool come summertime - but since 1993 it's been as a coach and not as a swimmer. "The central hub of little kids' social life is the pool in the summer," says Mihavetz, 33, a Wyman Park resident who grew up in Bolton Hill. "It's not only a great sport to participate in, but also a really good social activity."

Jessica Long's proficiency in the pool is apparent after a few strokes. Bobbing up and down on the breaststroke, she's indistinguishable from the practice partners in her lane, but something seems missing from her otherwise impeccable freestyle form. The less splash swimmers make with their hands, the faster they go, but Long's kick leaves a curiously scant trail. The 14-year-old from Middle River has mastered the pull and push of water well enough to set multiple world records, but her athleticism is fully comprehended only on the pool deck.

An era will be ending next month when Bob Russell steps down as the announcer and starter for the Harper's Choice Challenge swim team. The 59-year-old Russell has held the job for almost 20 years, volunteering every Saturday morning for the Challenge, which competes in the Columbia Neighborhood Swim League. The Longfellow resident is a full-time free-lance writer with a lifelong interest in the theater. Russell also owns Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre in Baltimore and directs one show a year.

Michael Phelps and the rest of the American Olympic swim team have checked into Athens, but they were to leave Greece today for a few days of peace and quiet on a Mediterranean island 100 miles off the coast of Spain. The 19-year-old graduate of Towson High spent most of July in California. After another meet of historic proportions - the U.S. team trials - which concluded July 14, Phelps, 20 other men and 22 women then spent more than two weeks at Stanford University. They left that training camp earlier this week and traveled by charter flight to the site of the 2004 Olympics.

Today is a big day in the life of every area parent acquainted with the dolphin kick. It is the last swim meet Saturday of the summer.This morning about 40 teams of enthusiastic kids -- with their sun-dried parents -- will descend on seven Central Maryland pools and race each other in noisy, season-ending divisional swim meets.The swim-team scene was new to me. When I was a kid, all I did at the swimming pool was attempt a few cannon-balls off the high board and eat a substantial number of frozen Milky Way candy bars at the concession stand.

IT HAD BEEN a long time since I had gotten "wasted" on a Saturday morning, since I had been so totally tuckered out by 2 p.m. that I needed some serious late-afternoon sofa time. It had been a long time, in other words, since I had been to a summer swim meet. I joined the ranks of swim team parents 15 years ago, but in the last two years, I had enjoyed a vacation from this duty. One kid was too old to compete, the other was playing baseball almost every Saturday morning when the meets were held.

Marsea Nelson, age 13, and her mother, Barbara, were at their wits' end last year.They had been making the 50-mile round-trip drive to Frederick twice a week to participate on the Frederick Swans synchronized swim team. But Marsea wanted more.So, last fall, the Ellicott City family started the Starfish Synchro Club, a group of youngsters ages 9 to 13 who perform synchronized swimming -- complex movements of the arms, legs and hands, executed to music."It's a combination of gymnastics, dance and speed swimming," said Marsea.