Senior Circuit of Sorts : UCLA Gymnastics Coach Jerry Tomlinson Says He Believes Females Can Compete Even After Leaving Teen Years Behind

In women’s gymnastics, the saying has gone something like this: They’re not getting older, they’re getting fatter. And for years this was the cruel reality. All those supple sprites we kept seeing on “Wide World of Sports” grew up and out. They became, in other words, women. Grown out of their sport and into real life. They went to college, the gymnastic equivalent of pasture, a low-pressure payoff for all those lo-cal years in the elite program.

Well, what do you know. They may be getting better, too. Jerry Tomlinson, UCLA’s boyish women’s coach, says the collegiate level is no longer the place for one-time elites just looking for a place to water down and get a free education. In his program, at least, the grown-up elites may be able to give aforementioned sprites a pretty good run for their medals. “The gap is rapidly closing,” he says.

There’s still a gap, of course. The 90-pound girls from the elite program will probably always be the prime source of Olympic talent. In terms of strength ratios, and even daring, they will probably not be challenged. A 90-pounder will always be able to do things a 130-pounder can’t. Yet it’s interesting that some of these women do not automatically retire with the onset of puberty. Interesting that some coaches are shrewd enough to exploit this.

Tomlinson, who was named UCLA coach nine years ago, when he was only slightly older than the women he coached, says he no longer needs to be satisfied with a retired elite, someone just along for the ride. There are now enough of those gymnasts who remain competitive through body changes, taking advantage of increased strength and training, that he can discriminate among crops of incoming freshmen. “It’s no longer the elite’s world for the taking,” he says.

The consequence is that UCLA now has, if not a true world championship team, a looming national championship team. The Bruins, who have finished out of the national top 10 only once in Tomlinson’s previous eight years, are undefeated and ranked No. 1 going into Saturday’s National Collegiate Athletic Assn. West Regional. If there’s a gap in gymnastics these days, it could be between UCLA and the other collegiate teams.

Tomlinson says it’s still possible to tell which team would be better--a top elite team or a top collegiate team--just by looking at them at their ease. But for him, the more important comparison would be with this top UCLA team and his first collegiate team. “You’d know which was better right away,” he says. “Today’s kids are leaner, smaller and better defined. More and more, the college kids are maintaining their (elite) level.”

Junior Tanya Service might be a case in point. A member of the 1983 World Championship team and even the 1987 U.S. National team, she has successfully made the transition from elite gymnastics to the college level. At 5 feet 2 inches, 113 pounds, she is bigger than she was. Still, Tomlinson says, “Tanya’s doing everything she did when she was little, and doing it better.”

Service, incidentally, is not allowed to coast, her credentials notwithstanding. In terms of season bests, she’s running No. 3 behind Jill Andrews and Kim Hamilton.

“There’s no reason gymnasts shouldn’t get better as they get older,” he says. East European countries weren’t afraid to take advantage of increased experience levels, he points out. The Soviet Union’s Ludmila Tourischeva won the bronze medal in the 1976 Olympics at the advanced age of 23. Others such as Nelli Kim and Maxi Gnauck also excelled in their 20s. A better example is the United States’ Kathy Johnson, a woman in her 20s who won the bronze in the 1984 Olympic balance beam.

Perhaps, he points out, the United States is waking up to this. Tomlinson says that recently there were only two NCAA gymnasts ranked in the U.S. top 20. Today, he says, there are six. The difference, he says, is “a great and welcome influx of information on how to train these people--from psychologists who can deal with eating disorders to strength coaches. Now instead of saying, ‘I’m getting bigger,’ they say ‘I’m getting stronger.’ ”

All that said, women’s college gymnastics remains fundamentally different from elite gymnastics. This sport is far more team oriented; a gymnast’s all-around status is not secure, no matter what her reputation is. Service, for example, does not score as high as others on the vault, so Tomlinson could very well choose to replace her in that event with a specialist. This would remove her all-around status, but it would also remove some pressure, a far more disabling thing among elites than added weight. At the college level, the pressure is far more evenly distributed.

All of this suits Tomlinson, who grew up coaching elite gymnasts at KIPS, a top club in Long Beach. A kid who had once traded karate lessons for gymnastics lessons, he was recruited out of a doorway to coach. He had been lurking about the gym waiting for his sister when the coach there asked if he’d ever coached. Tomlinson said he had been helping out at his local gym and he was hired for the summer. His first day there, he was spotting for Debbie Fike, a top elite gymnast at the time. After her first vault, Tomlinson surprised himself by offering her some instruction. “I mean, I was 17 years old, and here’s Debbie Fike. She said, ‘OK,’ and tried it my way. I had confidence from that day on.”

Tomlinson went on to coach a number of elite gymnasts there but realized he didn’t have the entrepreneurial desire to have his own gym or the subservience to be an assistant coach. The UCLA job seemed perfect, except it was unlikely UCLA would choose a 21-year-old with less than two years of college. After he submitted his resume, UCLA sent it back and asked him again for the required information. “Hey, that’s me,” he said, “that’s all there is.”

But UCLA was looking for someone with experience with the elite gymnasts, and Tomlinson was that person. It was odd for Tomlinson, though, coaching girls who were his contemporaries. They were always asking him to parties, for example. Tomlinson, anxious to preserve whatever edge of authority he could, correctly refused.

That first team finished fifth in the nationals, and the Tomlinson regime was on its way. The gymnasts are better than ever, and if they’re not quite ready to beat the Soviets, well, they’ll give the rest of this collegiate country trouble. Perhaps getting older is getting better.