IN THE NEWS >> Juniors are causing a Stir
© August 2001 GirlsGymnastics.com

PHILADELPHIA - With a talent pool as phenomenal as this year's junior national team, it's fun to take out the crystal ball and gaze ahead to ... oh, 2003 and 2004.

That's when today's juniors -- two-time national champion Kristal Uzelac, Carly Patterson, Hollie Vise, Kaitlin White, Ashley Postell, Terin Humphrey, the list goes on and on -- become tomorrow's senior women's World Championship team and 2004 Athens Olympians.

Could we really be looking at a comeback? A repeat of the glorious 1996 Magnificent Seven team gold in Atlanta? A restoration of faith in a system that's been faltering internationally these past few years?

Yes! These girls rock, USA Gymnastics officials and top coaches agree. Everyone's crossing their fingers for a World Championship title in Southern California in 2003. A gold there, they hope, will serve as a springboard for a dynamite Olympic performance. Already this year, the U.S. junior team beat China and Romania. But 2003 and 2004 are a long way off.

The road to the 2004 Athens Olympics begins this week at the U.S. Championships in Philadelphia. That's where the nation's top juniors will be battling it out for supremacy.

Kathy Kelly, the USAG senior women's program director, says this is one of the strongest groups of juniors ever.

"Considering the code changes, the skill changes, the requirement changes, it's astounding -- certainly more than our toughest juniors in the past have done," Kelly says.

The juniors, who are age 15 or younger, follow the same rules as the seniors - except they'll have the choice of using the new or the old vaulting horse here at the U.S. Championships, The seniors will be required to use the new one.

"The most significant thing is the numbers," Kelly says. "I don't think we've ever had this many -- and they just keep coming! That's what makes us optimistic, even though we're three years out (of the Olympics)."

According to Donna Strauss, Kristal's coach at Parkettes in Allentown, Pennsylvania, "We're a good 12 deep and it's very exciting to think we have three years to develop. Where we're at in this quadrennium is a very high skill level. If everybody plays their cards right, I believe we'll be a very strong contender."

Mary Lee Tracy coaches national qualifiers Samantha Sheehan and Haiyah Rodriguez at Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy. She was amazed by what she saw at this year's U.S. Classic.

"I was overwhelmed and extremely impressed with the juniors -- their level of difficulty, their poise and their form," Tracy says. "Their expression on the floor, their performance level, was senior level. And it didn't just stop at the top 10 or 15 -- there are kids who are very good juniors who didn't make it to the championships."

Debbie Kaitchuk of Brown's Gymnastics, who coaches junior standouts Susan Jackson, Meaghan Browning and Nina Kim, has been working with national team members since 1989. She says, "I do feel this is the strongest group of talent. The kids I'm very impressed with are the three girls from here -- they don't have a weak event. I'm also very impressed with Ashley Postell, Kristal (Uzelac), Maria Scaffidi and Melanie Sinclair. You never know who's going to win. The pecking order changes every time."

Nobody's growing more contenders now than Evgeny Marchenko of World Olympic Gymnastics Academy in Plano, Texas. Five of his gymnasts -- Carly, Kaitlin, Hollie, Lindsey Vanden Eykel and Nicole Childs qualified for U.S. Championships.

"As far as our chances for the country, I think they are great," Marchenko says. "At the same time, there is a lot of competition. China, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, are very strong. But we have a lot of choices now and hopefully, everyone will be healthy. We have opportunities, we have possibilities."

He likes the fact that there's so much great competition within our own borders: "Competition makes our girls better. It's more fun to win when you have strong competition."

Why all this talent is rising to the surface just now is anybody's guess. There are a number of contributing factors, not the least of which is better coaching and organization, observers believe.

"I'm impressed with the quality of coaching," says Don Peters of SCATS, which hosted the U.S. Classic - the qualifier for the U.S. Championships. "I think this generation of coaches is going to be better than the one that preceded them. They've been trained elsewhere and they're doing a great job."

But it takes more than just talent on the part of the gymnasts to win. Officials and coaches believe the keys to success include commitment, discipline and a lot of international exposure.

The most concrete of the three - international exposure - already is being implemented.

"These juniors will hit the ground running come this fall," Kelly says. She says the Goodwill Games team will be made up predominantly of juniors. Then the U.S. will take on Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Australia and China -- all by December.

Marchenko believes the U.S. needs to align its program more closely with those of European countries. "A lot of countries have centralized training," he says. "We have to give (our gymnasts) the opportunity to train as much as the Europeans are training. With home schooling and training twice a day, that helps."

Says Kaitchuk, "It's going to take rock-bottom commitment. If you don't have that, you can have all the talent in the world and still not make it."

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