Swimmers

Unlike many people their age, David Wharton and Peter Boden didn't have the chance to sleep late Friday morning. Holidays such as the Fourth of July are cause for celebration, but they are no reason for missing practice. Wharton and Boden joined about 80 other swimmers at the Nor-Gwyn Swim Club in North Wales for their 6:30-to-9 a.m. daily workout. For Wharton and Boden, though, Friday's practice was not just another exercise. It was a preface to participation in the 1986 world swimming championships in Madrid, Spain, Aug. 17-23.

Most top swimmers jump in the water when they are around eight years old and never come out. They swim before school. They swim after school. They swim on weekends. They swim for their club in the summer, for their school in the winter, and for their high-powered, high-pressure program at nearly every chance in between. Cherry Hill East senior Mike Krohn is different. "He doesn't have the wear on his tires," said Pete Holcroft, Krohn's coach with the South Jersey Aquatic Club.

Even when she was an infant, Meghan Peart showed signs that she would become a swimmer. "Meghan has always loved the water," Peart's mother, Charlyn, said. "She loved to be in the bathtub when she was a couple of months old. When she was 6 months, we took her to family swims at the high school. She loved to splash around in the water. " The playful splashing at the Upper Perkiomen High pool eventually turned into powerful swimming. Peart, a 10th grader at Germantown Academy and a resident of Green Lane, is the nation's No. 1-ranked 15-year-old in the 50-meter freestyle.

A 9-year-old girl who was an accomplished swimmer died yesterday morning while practicing at the Bustleton Swim Club in Northeast Philadelphia, police reported. Cate Mackell of the Huntington Valley area was finishing swim-team practice when she started to get out of the pool in the shallow end before slumping back into the water, according to Tom Pagan, president of the swim club at Northeast Avenue and Lott Street. Pagan said two nurses and a lifeguard tried to resuscitate her. Police said an emergency rescue unit was called at 10:45 a.m. The girl was pronounced dead at Frankford Hospital-Torresdale Campus at 11:30 a.m. Cpl. James Pauley, a police spokesman, said the city's medical examiner would conduct an autopsy.

SAO PAULO - Thousands of flesh-eating piranhas have infested a river beach popular with tourists in western Brazil and have bitten at least 15 unwary swimmers, authorities said yesterday. Officials in the city of Caceres in Mato Grosso state said this is the first time they have had a problem with piranhas at the Daveron beach on the Paraguay River, where the aggressive fish began schooling about two weeks ago. "People have got to be very careful. If they're bitten, they've got to get out of the water rapidly and not allow the blood to spread," firefighter Raul Castro de Oliveira told Globo TV's G1 website.

No fancy strokes or daredevil dives - just plenty of splashing and bubble- blowing and fun in the pool. That's what the Ambler YMCA's Waterbabies program is all about. For 20 years, parents have been taking their tots to the Y to learn early, from certified instructors, that swimming pools are fun. Everyone into the pool - even Moms and Dads.

Attention swimmers: Sleep deprivation is finally coming to an end. The high school portion of the swimming season will conclude Sunday with the NJSIAA state championships at Rutgers University. All those mornings of awakening well before sunrise for practice for their U.S. Swimming teams, all the afternoons spent waiting for practice to begin because of staggered times caused by the area's lack of pools, the countless miles in the pool . . . that soon will be no more. Sure, some USS swimmers will begin their taper for Junior Nationals after Monday, so there still is some work to do, but many of the swimmers will wind down - at least a little - after this weekend.

The 1987-88 boys' swimming season should be an exciting and competitive one in Delaware County high schools. A host of talented swimmers will be competing on both the team and individual levels and a number have a chance, at the end of their league seasons, to participate in district and state competitions. In the Catholic League, Cardinal O'Hara may have a tough time improving on last year's record of 10-2, 8-1 in the league. O'Hara has lost eight swimmers to graduation - six of them members of the all-Catholic team.

The Downingtown boys' swim team extended its winning streak to four with a close 89-82 victory last Monday over a tough Conestoga squad. The Whippets (4-1) held an 81-76 lead with one event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, remaining. Coach Steve Curtis said he had a feeling that the meet would come down to the last relay, so he put his two strongest all-round swimmers, Steve and Doug Petrie, on that team. "Usually, I use those two in the medley relay instead of the freestyle relay, but I had a hunch we were going to need them in the free relay at the end," Curtis said.

In cross-country, a sport usually dominated by track athletes, two swimmers may lead West Chester Henderson and Unionville to league titles. Defending Ches-Mont League champion Kim Saddic has picked up where she left off last season, leading the Warriors to a 5-0 record. Henderson meets league opponent Owen J. Roberts tomorrow. Saddic has swum on a club team with Karen Laslo, who has led Unionville's cross-country team to a 5-0 record (4-0 league) and first place in the Southern Chester County League.

Actors don't usually perform on Broadway and then join the cast of the school play. Likewise, athletes don't often vie for an Olympic berth and then go out for the high school team. But Allie Szekely is a 15-year-old from Doylestown who acts as a 15-year-old and enjoys doing things that 15-year-olds do. That's why she has taken the standard sequence and turned it on its orderly head. Less than nine months after swimming in the U.S. Olympic trials - and becoming a media darling for a day - the Gwynedd Mercy Academy freshman will compete in her first PIAA state championships starting Wednesday.

HONOLULU - A Coast Guardsman who disappeared more than three months ago and showed up at his home over the weekend was in military custody at Pearl Harbor on Wednesday after being released from the hospital. Tripler Army Medical Center medically cleared and released Petty Officer First Class Russell Matthews on Tuesday night, Coast Guard spokesman Chief Warrant Officer Gene Maestas said. When Matthews, 36, vanished in October, he was in the process of being discharged from the Coast Guard for illegal use of marijuana, Maestas said.

BRIGANTINE, N.J. - Lester Kaplan was a swimmer and a gambler. At times he would swim so far out into the ocean from the beach in front of Resorts Casino-Hotel that his wife thought he wouldn't make it back. "He always made it back," Atara Kaplan said Monday. But a hurricane proved too much for the 73-year-old former lawyer with the long gray ponytail. Despite a bad heart and a house on flood-prone Lafayette Boulevard in the north end of Brigantine, Kaplan refused all pleas that he leave before Hurricane Sandy landed.

Look for a splash Monday night when the Atlantic City Aquatic Club makes its last-leg pitch to keep swimming at the high school pool. City kids of modest means are ready to talk about how they learned to swim at the club, how the high level of instruction and intense competition prepared them to ply the roughs of the real world. They could help club president Joe Haney make the argument that the school district would be killing a good thing if it charges the club $85,000 a year for using the pool when it's been paying closer to $6,500.

The Atlantic City Aquatic Club is a great bargain, especially if you happen to live in Atlantic City. For $200 a year, you get instruction from coaches who have sent swimmers to the Junior Olympics, to college teams and to national meets, where one 10-year-old boy recently broke a backstroke record set by the young Michael Phelps. The club is also a lifesaver, says Enoe Azcona, and not just because the single mom has raised two children on an island. As her son, Jorge, learned to swim, he shed 60 pounds and gained strength from a team of achievers that kept him from the call of the streets.

  ATLANTIC CITY - Two women and a teenage boy ignored the stern whistle warnings of lifeguards to stay close to shore, to venture only waist-deep into the surf off North Carolina Avenue. Rip currents - which can move as fast as eight feet per second, faster than an Olympic swimmer can sprint - pulled the three farther and farther from shore, into deeper water, where relentless monster waves nearly drowned them. By the time four lifeguards were able to pull them to safety, the swimmers were battered and exhausted, said Beach Patrol Chief Rod Aluise.

A "localized sewer leak" has prompted Ocean City to close the stretch of beach between Stenton Place and Delancey Place to swimming as a precaution. "As a result of this leak, some material may possibly have entered the storm sewer system," the city said in a statement. Water samples are being tested, but the city said it expects bathing will be allowed to resume Tuesday. The more than 1,500-foot stretch of beach closed to swimming is at the northern end of the boardwalk. All other beached are open to swimming, the city said.

LONDON - Rebecca Soni pumped her fist and beamed, a rare display of emotion from the breaststroke queen. Tyler Clary giddily splashed the water, having made up for all the close calls in his career. Both played leading roles on a golden night at the pool for the United States, showing there's more to this team than Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. Soni set her second world record in two days to defend her Olympic title in the 200-meter breaststroke Thursday, then Clary dealt Lochte a stunning loss in the 200 backstroke for the first gold of his career.

LONDON - The news came first on Twitter, mixed into a stream of updates on the social lives of her friends and teammates. Back home, half a world away, a movie theater had turned into a killing field. Missy Franklin, who could win as many as seven Olympic swimming medals, goes to high school in Aurora, Colo. One of her best friends had talked excitedly for weeks about hitting the midnight opening of the new Batman movie. For a few hours on July 20, Franklin was not the breakout star of the U.S. women's swim team.

LONDON - In many ways, Michael Phelps has already won. Whatever happens in his epic showdown Saturday night in the Olympic Aquatics Centre - whether Phelps or Ryan Lochte wins, or if some other challenger shocks the field - Phelps has already etched his name among the all-time Olympians. Somewhere above Mark Spitz and just below Zeus. Lochte is capable of beating Phelps in the 400-meter individual medley. He already did, at the U.S. Olympic trials a few weeks ago. That victory started the drumbeat of anticipation for this Games-opening swim-off.