COLLEGE DIVISION : Johnson Wins Toughest Fight

For Amy Johnson, the opposition on the field has always been the smallest obstacle she has had to face in her career with the Cal Poly Pomona women’s soccer team.

Since joining the team as a freshman, the 20-year-old forward has consistently been among the top players for the Broncos. Last season, as a sophomore, she was Pomona’s leading scorer and was chosen to the second team of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s Division II All-American squad. She is already among the school’s all-time leaders in goals, points and assists.

But for the 5-foot-5 Johnson, the toughest fight hasn’t been with the competition, but with herself.

She suffered from bulimia, an eating disorder found primarily in younger women who see themselves as overweight, or likely to become overweight. Those so afflicted commonly ingest large quantities of food, then make themselves vomit in order to remain thin.

Johnson said her problems stemmed from the perception she had of herself while growing up.

“She wanted to be Miss America at one time but she was too short,” said Pomona Coach Brian Wiesner, who wrote the thesis for his master’s degree on eating disorders in female athletes.

For as long as she could remember, Johnson said, she had been concerned about her weight, although it was not until after graduating from Corona High School that signs of the disorder first surfaced.

“It was probably between my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college, but I wouldn’t really call it bulimia,” she said. “At this time, it was more like excessive dieting. In my fall semester and freshman season, I didn’t really start throwing up.

“Right after the soccer season was when it got really bad. I always thought I was real heavy, so I started dieting a lot.”

By that time, Johnson said, staying thin had become a dangerous obsession.

“I would just try to please my friends by eating a meal and then I would go to the nearest bathroom and purge it all after I ate,” she said. Although Johnson often purged before games, Wiesner said he didn’t detect a problem during her freshman season.

“She didn’t lose a thing in the way she played on the field,” he said. “Her performance for us has been super all along. So it was something that was really more noticeable when she wasn’t playing.”

The coach said it wasn’t until the spring quarter of her freshman year that he noticed a change in Johnson’s appearance and weight.

“It was easy to tell that Amy wasn’t up to par, but I didn’t know why,” Wiesner said. “Then her friends (from the team) started calling me up and telling me what she was doing. I didn’t know what to do. . . . I had to work with our training staff on it because we didn’t know how to deal with it.”

After he became aware of the problem, Wiesner said, he assigned players to monitor Johnson’s eating habits, only to be met with resistance.

“I had people watching her every day, and she’d come up to me and say, ‘I don’t want people spying on me,’ ” Wiesner said.

It was toward the end of the spring quarter that Wiesner and school trainers finally confronted Johnson with the evidence.

Shortly afterward, Johnson agreed to meet with Gayle Ashabraner, then a nutritional counselor at the school’s health center, who put Johnson on a diet.

Wiesner said Johnson’s typical playing weight is about 123 pounds and she had lost 20 pounds by the time she met with Ashabraner. Johnson was also constantly out of breath and had puffy cheeks.

“I told Brian that I’d (meet Ashabraner) but I didn’t want to gain any weight,” Johnson said. “She asked me what my ideal weight was, and I said about 105 pounds. She said, ‘If you trust me, I’ll guarantee that you weigh that.’ ”

The counselor persuaded Johnson to keep a list of her eating habits. At first, she continued her old ways.

“I would have a chart and I’d have to write it down with an asterisk if I purged,” she said. “There were some days when I did two or three or four times and some days when I didn’t do it at all.”

Johnson said she finally learned to control her eating habits during the summer before her sophomore season.

But although Johnson no longer has bulimia, Wiesner said she must always monitor her eating habits.

“She’s not a recovered bulimic, she’s a recovering bulimic and she’ll always have to be concerned about it,” he said. “She can always be susceptible to it again if the conditions are right.”

College Notes

The Cal State Northridge football team won its fourth game in a row by outscoring Cal Lutheran, 34-33, Saturday. But the Matadors (4-2) could have problems when they visit perennial NCAA Division II power Portland State in a Western Football Conference game Saturday at Portland. The Vikings (4-2) rolled over Cal Poly San Luis Obispo by a 56-26 score in their last game. . . . It will be a matchup of perhaps the top two Division II football teams in Southern California when the University of San Diego (5-0) plays Occidental (3-1) in a nonconference game Saturday in Eagle Rock. Occidental has won its last three games, including a forfeit victory over Azusa Pacific.

UC Riverside will play host to the 1989 Rolex Southern California Intercollegiate Tennis Championships Friday through Sunday. The tournament will include top men and women from NCAA Divisions II and III, NAIA and junior colleges.