Swimmers

Stevensville -- From a distance, the 644 swimmers who stroked and kicked their way 4.4 miles across the Chesapeake Bay yesterday looked like so many colorful bait fish thrashing the water to escape hungry predators. But up close, each was fighting an individual battle with his or her own body and the elements. And all enjoyed some measure of triumph as they stumbled, staggered or strode from the water alongside the east end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. "I used to be in better shape," said Mike Doyle, a 51-year-old electrical engineer from Pennsauken, N.J., who grabbed a pair of crutches as he left the water.

Name: Ken Spencer Job description: In second year as head coach, Columbia Clippers, the swim club sponsored by the Columbia Association. Year-round club has 350 swimmers, about 150 seriously competitive, the rest in various development stages. Ages range from 4 to college, with biggest age group between 8 and 11. Supervises 11 part-time coaches who help at four indoor pools, two at Columbia Swim Center in Wilde Lake, one at Columbia Gym in River Hill, and one at Supreme Sports Club in Owen Brown.

Five Howard County swimmers who are members of the UMBC Retriever Aquatic Club returned from the U.S. Senior Swim Championships last summer in Florida with shattered pride and no medals.Their coach, Sid Burkot, wants and expects better results for this year's championships, which start tomorrow and run through Friday in Mission Viejo, Calif., about 30 miles south of Los Angeles."They are more seasoned and experienced swimmers than last year," Burkot said. "They have been exposed to a few more things -- more pressure and top caliber meets.

Boaters called the Sunset Marina with two kinds of questions Wednesday: Was it true that white marlin were biting in record numbers? And could their boats be hauled onto land before Hurricane Earl threatened the shore on Friday? "The weather is going to turn fast," said marina manager Brian G. Tinkler, who expects to bring in as many as 100 vessels before the storm strikes. "Wind is a huge concern. The tidal surge can push boats up above the pilings. " Workers pulled dozens of boats from the water Wednesday, hoisting 30-ton yachts with giant cranes and lifting smaller craft with machines resembling oversized forklifts.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Baltimore's best swimmers traveled to the Midwest and spurred high hopes for what they might accomplish a year from now in the Far East. Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff were named the top individual performers at the ConocoPhillips USA Swimming Nationals last night. Phelps leaves here with six new gold medals, including one from last night's 400-meter medley relay, won in 3 minute, 38.32 seconds, and Hoff won three national titles, capped by an impressive win in the 200-meter individual medley last night.

ATLANTA -- It was not a very good day for America's Olympic sweetheart. Janet Evans' much-publicized quest for another Olympic medal in the 400-meter freestyle ended in bitter disappointment and international controversy yesterday morning at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center.Evans made a strategic error in her preliminary heat and assumed her second-place finish would be good enough to get her into last night's final. Instead, she finished ninth in the prelims -- the top eight advance -- and missed the medal race while the U.S. coaching staff fumed over an International Olympic Committee decision that allowed Ireland's Michelle Smith to compete after missing the event's entry deadline.

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."

There's a lot of emotional baggage being carried around in Swimmers, a remarkable slice-of-life film about a disintegrating Eastern Shore family that is both heartbreaking and, in ways that sort of sneak up on you, quietly hopeful. Eschewing grand gestures in favor of reflective moments more intimate and far more satisfying, this second feature from Easton's Doug Sadler has the courage to allow its characters room to grow while never demanding that they do. The men and women on display here spend a lot of time stumbling and falling, but resolutely - sometimes courageously, sometimes foolishly - push on. Sadler's film, from a script he spent more than five years developing, gives viewers the time and space to rejoice in the characters' minor triumphs, empathize with their often daunting struggles, and reflect on the despair that sometimes beats them down, other times pushes them forward.

In 1978, Donna Elshafei and Thunder Hill teammates David Bird, Bailey Weiss and Donna Williams swam a 200-meter freestyle relay in 1 minute, 46.08 seconds. Nobody in Columbia had eclipsed their time until Saturday, when four Long Reach Marlins broke one of the county's oldest swim records with a time of 1 minute, 44.35 seconds at the Columbia Neighborhood Swim League's All-City Championship at Phelps Luck. The mixed team included, in the order that they swam, Marie Jackson, Kendrick McDonald, Shelby Stang (all 13)

NEW YORK // IN SPITE OF HER ZIPPERED leopard-print vest, her glitzy resume and the rave reviews she has gotten from showbiz-industry magazines, when Tara Devon Gallagher makes her appearance on a March Saturday, it hardly qualifies as the stuff of movie stardom. She enters a SoHo bistro with her mother and grandmother, who sit down to share brunch. Her nose is running. And once she takes a seat, she can't decide between the pancakes (a house specialty) and the Caesar salad on the menu.