They’re Orange County’s One-of-a-Kind Team : Despite Obstacles, Boys’ Gymnastics Program Is Still Alive at Marina High

They hold cookie sales and car washes just to keep themselves in uniform and adequately equipped. They must travel at least 30 miles to find competition.

They are the Marina High School boys’ gymnastics team, the sole remaining high school gymnastics team in Orange County.

Each weekday morning, long before fellow students are reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the 22-member team can be found in the Viking gym, working on back flips and handsprings.

No, the team doesn’t have the entire gym to itself. It has about one-third of it.

One recent morning, a partition separated the gymnasts from three Marina basketball players, whose ball continually crashed against the wall.

The gymnasts didn’t even notice--they’re used to it.

That partition serves a figurative and literal role in separating the two sports.

On one side is a prime example of a well-funded, prospering sport, played in front of large crowds. On the other is a sport scrapping for every penny just to maintain its existence.

The chief scrapper is Coach Farouk Mohamed, a short, muscular man with drill-sergeant looks. A former Egyptian Olympic gymnast (Rome, 1960), Mohamed has been a physical education teacher and gymnastics coach at Marina for 13 years.

“Without him, there wouldn’t be any gymnastics here,” said David Trombley, a senior and the Vikings’ top all-around competitor.

Proposition 13, passed in 1978, was designed to save property owners tax money by trimming excess from the state government. But it also forced a number of state institutions, particularly school districts, to cut back services. Some sports had to be dropped, and gymnastics, which hardly generates enough revenue to cover costs, was an obvious victim.

One floor exercise mat can cost up to $10,000. Portable rings ($12,000), horse vaults ($1,100), parallel bars ($1,600) and horizontal bars ($1,000) also are expensive.

There are other reasons for the sport’s demise. Qualified coaches usually won’t give up a secure, more-lucrative position at a private club for a walk-on job at a high school.

Also, school administrators were reluctant to support gymnastics programs when they were the only school in the district or league to sponsor the sport.

But at Marina, Mohamed refused to let the sport die.

He and his athletes have been able to raise enough funds, without aid from the district or school administration, to keep the team in competition. Barely.

“The problem right now is our money,” said Paula Sheppard, Marina gymnastics booster club president. “We had enough to buy uniforms for everyone on the team this year, but we need a new floor exercise mat, too.”

The team pays for everything except transportation to away meets, all of which are in Los Angeles County. The district foots the bill for trips, but there are none to rival schools in the Sunset League.

Arroyo and El Rancho are the only other Southern Section schools with surviving boys’ gymnastics teams.

El Rancho, located in Pico Rivera (30 miles from Marina), is the closest school to Marina, which must often travel to City Section schools for meets.

“I like this sport--I like it a lot,” Trombley said. “But I wish it was still in the district so we wouldn’t have to travel so far.”

Trombley is typical of the Viking gymnasts. He’s good enough to compete at the college level, but said he won’t.

“I thought about it, but I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll probably work out, but I’ll come back here and help Mr. Mohamed train the new kids.”

Mohamed, however, isn’t in the business to produce collegiate champions or Olympic medalists. He said he believes the sport transcends winning and losing--that it is important for the discipline it instills in his athletes.

“We have a tendency in the U.S. to ‘win, win, win’ and ignore physical education,” Mohamed said.

This irritates Mohamed.

The U.S. men’s team defeated the Chinese at the 1984 Olympics to earn the gold medal, but Mohamed thinks that U.S. success might be short-lived.

“We need to come back to our senses and reinstate gymnastics in our schools,” he said. “We need to start in the elementary schools and work up through junior high and high school. Then we would have undefeated national teams.”

He doesn’t believe private clubs are an adequate source for Olympic-level gymnasts.

“An athlete might have financial ability but not physical,” he said.

If Mohamed has his way, Marina will overcome those financial obstacles and continue to field a boy’s gymnastics team.

As long as Mohamed is at the school, the bake sales and car washes will continue. And so will that thread of tradition known as the Marina boy’s gymnastic team.