Swim Team

This was supposed to be the year that the Loyola swim team was vulnerable - the year its long stretch atop the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association could come to an end. If an undefeated conference dual-meet season didn't disprove those theories, the Dons' performance yesterday at the MIAA Championships did. Relying heavily on their younger swimmers, the Dons, thanks to four gold medals from sophomore Nick Taylor and four first first-place relay...

The entire Columbia Association Swim Center is scheduled to open tomorrow, flaunting its $2.7 million renovation after being closed for five months. The center, which houses two 25-yard pools, will have almost all new features and fixtures from top to bottom, from new roofs to pool furniture. "I figured if we're going to spend close to $3 million, it should look and feel and operate like a new facility," said Rob Goldman, the Columbia Association's vice president for sport and fitness.

By today, the dust and debris covering the Columbia Swim Center's floors and one of its two swimming pools should be cleaned up, and the ceiling tiles should be put back into place in time for the newly renovated center's reopening. Closed since late May, all areas of the center - except for the main pool - are scheduled to reopen today with practically new everything as part of a $2.7 million renovation. "Almost everything you'll see now has a new finish on it," said Frank Standafer, project manger for the Columbia Association.

After the seizure and the surgery, she couldn't recall how to swim. The 12-year-old lay in an Arizona hospital worrying about what the doctors would do next and wondering how she had ever done the backstroke. In her hometown of Oxford, Md., Corey Wheatley's backstroke was tough to beat. A champion swimmer from the time she was 6 years old, Corey learned how to swim in a creek behind her house. Out past her town's Victorian houses, its sandy beach and the old-time ferry that still carries people from Oxford to Bellevue, Corey's mother Ellen saw her daughter evolve from a good swimmer to one who could become great.

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.

The Columbia Clippers Swim Team, a competitive swim club, will hold its annual Swim-a-Thon from 8 p.m. to midnight Saturday at Columbia Swim Center in Wilde Lake Village Center. The team, which has about 350 members ages 6 to 18, expects to swim a total of 817 miles - the equivalent of the distance to Bermuda, said Eileen Clegg. The event is a fund-raiser for five awards to be given to graduating swim team members in memory of Clegg's late husband, John C. Clegg, a volunteer "swim dad" for the Clippers and the Columbia Neighborhood Swim League.

The term "masters swimmer" in Howard County encompasses everyone from Ross Kennard, a former Canadian national champion in the sport, to Jill RachBeisel and Dan Beisel, who found themselves on starting blocks for the first time in their 40s. All three are members of a masters swim team, now in its third year. The team practices at the Howard County and Catonsville YMCAs, drawing people from Baltimore and Howard counties. Coach Michael Jacobson, 35, of Ellicott City says he has about 35 to 50 active members for a YMCA-sponsored team, which competes against comparable squads in Baltimore and is open to anyone 18 and older.

Pounded by heavy surf and dragged seaward by undertow, a drowning tourist was very near death two years ago when Ocean City lifeguard David Shane Hayes skidded his four-wheeler on the beach and dived in after her. Once safely ashore, the woman sputtered her gratitude in accented English and offered Mr. Hayes the use of her vacation house in France if he ever came to Europe. "She kept telling him, `You saved my life, you saved my life,'" recalled Mr. Hayes' friend and fellow lifeguard Damian Noordhoorn.

Name: Bradley Peters Job description: Howard County YMCA aquatics director and coach of its swim team, the Manta Rays, a full-time job for the past three years; has been at Y for five years. Swim team, an eight-month "winter" program, has 127 swimmers from 5 to 18. Club began in 1978, and later founded Central Maryland Swim League, which has grown to 16 teams competing in team-oriented meets from September to April and covers much of Maryland. Club, which dropped from 220 swimmers in the early 1990s to 44 in middle of the decade, has been rebuilding.

SYDNEY, Australia - When Australia upset the United States in the men's 400-meter freestyle relay on the opening night of the Olympic swimming competition last weekend, Australian swimmer Michael Klim couldn't help himself. He strummed an air guitar as he celebrated on the pool deck, mocking U.S. swimmer Gary Hall Jr.'s pre-Games prediction that the Americans would "smash" the Aussies "like guitars." The walls of the Sydney International Aquatic Centre shook with noise that night as Australia's Ian Thorpe won the gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle and then came back an hour later to anchor the winning relay.