Locker Room

While Bally's Holiday Fitness Center members have been working out, some of their money, credit cards and other personal belongings have been walking out. Between March 4 and 18, there were nine reported incidents of thefts, totaling more than $1,600 in cash plus additional losses from purchases made with stolen credit cards, from the men's locker room in the health club at 151 Old York Rd. in Willow Grove, Upper Moreland police said. As many as 30 thefts or attempted thefts, some from lockers and others from cars in the parking lot of the club, have been reported since October, police said.

From: Gonzalez, John To: Ford, Bob; Sheridan, Phil Subject: DeSean and DeShameless Have either of you ever hugged an athlete? Because I watched Howard Eskin and DeSean Jackson embrace after practice, and my retina still burns. You know that sign in the locker room that says "No autographs, please"? I'd like to add an amendment: "No touching. Stand back. Leave room for the Holy Ghost. " If you reference the Holy Ghost, you're not going to come off as the young guy. . . . OK, DeSean and DeShameless: It's a rookie hazing ritual.

Two former Eagles cheerleaders have filed a federal lawsuit against 23 National Football League teams and many of their players, contending that over several years the players sneaked peeks at them through peepholes between the visiting-team locker room and the cheerleaders' locker room at Veterans Stadium. The suit, which does not include the Eagles as defendants, alleges that being able to look into the cheerleaders' locker room "was considered one of the 'perks' of being a visiting team of the Eagles.

You can't help but wonder about an offhand comment made by Samantha Stevenson two decades ago. She was a sportswriter trying to gain access to the Phillies locker room in 1978, in the days when women were knocking on the door of equality. They wanted access to the athletes whom only male reporters had covered for generations. What was the team's objection? "I think [then-owner] Ruly Carpenter is fighting me so hard because he thinks I'll seduce his superstars, and find out what's really going on with that team and then write the whole damn thing in some national magazine," Stevenson told The Inquirer in October 1978.

Great Valley girls' basketball coach Alex Venarchik stood in the locker room ready to address his team before a late-season matchup against visiting Octorara. The Patriots were mired in a three-game losing streak and Venarchik said the atmosphere had become tense. As the coach began to speak, the locker room doors swung open as Nicky DiOrio and Jordan Van Sciver, the team's two student managers, entered the room. "They made a big entrance and they both smiled and I said, 'Look at these guys, they are just here because they're having fun and you girls need to get back to having fun,' " Venarchik said.

Brian Ludwig's 15-year-old son was buttoning his pants after gym class in the Roxborough High School locker room Monday morning when they grabbed him. "They picked him up, ripped off his pants, ripped off his underwear. The more he fought, the worse it got," Ludwig said. The three attackers - all juniors - dragged the freshman around the floor of the locker room and snapped pictures of him on a cell phone, Ludwig said. School District officials said they are investigating the incident.

You won't find Dominik Hasek in the Buffalo locker room these days. In fact, you won't even find Hasek's nameplate in the Buffalo locker room - his stall has been taken over by rookie goalie Martin Biron. Since Hasek left the lineup indefinitely at the end of October, Biron - a first-round pick in 1995- has been the Sabres' No. 1 goalie. Last night, he came within a skate blade of shutting out the Flyers, winning, 3-1, stopping 25 of 26 shots. It wasn't Biron's idea to physically displace Hasek.

A little over a week after 16-year-old Peter Henriques was charged with murder in the beating death of classmate Nielsa Mason, a Cumberland County Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that there was enough evidence to keep him in custody. Judge George H. Stanger Jr. said he was basing his ruling partly on inconsistencies in Henriques' accounts of his actions on the day of the killing, April 28. He also noted that the youth's fingerprints were found at the scene, and that Henriques had failed to tell Mason's father of her death when he came to pick her up from track practice.

PITTSBURGH - At least six more buildings at the University of Pittsburgh received bomb threats Thursday as students and their parents continued to press authorities to solve the case. No bombs have been found and no one has been injured since the threats began more than two months ago. The FBI seized computers and related equipment Wednesday night from a couple who had been questioned in the case earlier, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Katherine Anne McCloskey and Seamus Johnston have condemned the threats and said they didn't have anything to do with them.

When the second half started, Swarthmore Academy wasn't even on the court. But the unusual decision by the referees to start the second half of the Shipley Tournament title game Wednesday while the Knights were still in the locker room was the last advantage Shipley would get. A second-half rally, led by Terry Curtis' 11 fourth-quarter points, carried Swarthmore to a 62-57 win over its host and the tournament championship. "It was very strange," Swarthmore coach Mark Jordan said.