She Stays on the Beam Without Medical Help : Gymnastics: Cal State Fullerton’s Stacey Harris, a Christian Scientist, chooses spiritual healing over doctors’ assistance.

Scanning the Cal State Fullerton gymnastics room is like looking through the window of a medical supply store.

Two girls are wearing bulky knee braces. One wears an elbow brace. Several knees are heavily taped, and almost every ankle is taped.

In the center of it all, working out on the beam, is Titan junior Stacey Harris, who wears no braces, no tape, nothing that would give her body a little extra support during practice.

Not that she couldn’t use it. Harris had taken a nasty spill on the beam the day before and re-injured a hip flexor. She has injured both knees in the past four years and once sprained an ankle.

But to seek medical assistance would go against Harris’ religious beliefs. As a Christian Scientist, Harris chooses spiritual healing over medical care.

“We believe the mind is all-powerful,” said Harris, who will lead the Titans into today’s NCAA Championships at Oregon State. “We believe the human body is perfect in the first place, so there’s no reason for doctors.”

Harris says she has never received any vaccinations. She has never taken any cold medicine or aspirin. And she has never had any serious illnesses except for a short bout with bronchitis last year.

“I stayed in bed and prayed,” Harris said of her treatment. “I was better after two days.”

Of course, Christian Scientists probably didn’t have gymnastics in mind when they shunned conventional medicine.

A sport in which participants do flips on a four-inch-wide, four-foot-high beam, whip their bodies around uneven parallel bars and do twisting somersaults on a mat is not exactly conducive to maintaining the perfect human body.

Accidents will happen, as Harris discovered in her senior year at Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, when she dislocated her right knee during a floor routine, and at last season’s NCAA Championships, when she hyper-extended her left knee on a vault.

And, try as she did, Harris couldn’t avoid the doctor’s office. She didn’t want to visit a physician after her first knee injury, but her coach insisted because of gym policy.

“It was a scary experience because it was the first time I had been to a doctor,” Harris said. “I was really nervous and didn’t know what to expect.”

Harris survived but didn’t seek any follow-up care. It was two months before she returned to the gym.

Last year, the Titans’ team trainer was present when Harris injured her knee, and she was X-rayed. But that was all the medical attention she requested, and she spent much of the summer resting--and praying.

In effect, Harris has had to compromise her religious beliefs during her gymnastics career, but she would rather do that than cause a fuss.

“To avoid controversy, a lot of times we’ll go to a doctor,” Harris said. “That alleviates everyone else’s fears. I understand it’s part of what I have to do to make it through this sport.”

Lynn Rogers, Fullerton women’s gymnastics coach, says Harris, despite her knee injury, has made it through a lot better than most.

“She has been the least sick of anyone on the team,” Rogers said. “A lot of the girls have to take anti-inflammatory pills for injuries, but she has never needed any kind of medication.”

The fact that Harris has had only one major injury in three years also might be attributed to her conservative style. She grew up competing for the San Diego YMCA club team, where Coach Glen Vaughan emphasized consistency and precision.

“We didn’t throw a lot of the spectacular moves like the others,” Harris said. “We won by being consistent and clean.”

Harris’ father, Mark, was so adamant that Stacey continue this style at Fullerton that, when Rogers made his home recruiting visit, he asked the coach to make a deal: Stacey wouldn’t have to do a double back flip on the floor, a release move on the bars and any twists on the vault.

Too dangerous, Mark Harris said.

No problem, Rogers said.

Despite the absence of such flashy moves and any All-American awards, Harris has prospered at Fullerton. Her all-around average has improved each season, from 36.94 in 1988, to 37.81 in 1989, to a team-high 37.98 in 1990.

Harris’ season-best score of 38.35 against San Jose State is the 18th-best score in the nation this year. She also shares the Titan record on the floor exercise with a score of 9.75.

“She doesn’t have the big name, and she doesn’t do a lot of the big moves,” Rogers said. “But when the smoke clears and you look around, the winner of the meet is Stacey Harris. She has quietly been our best kid.”

Harris has developed a healthy fear of the sport. “As you get older, your fear increases because your body doesn’t recover well,” she said. But it wasn’t this way when Harris was a kid.

When she was 6, Harris tried flipping from the fireplace to a bean-bag chair and was always attempting cartwheels around the house.

“My mother enrolled me in a gymnastics program so I wouldn’t kill myself,” Harris said. “She wanted me in a safer environment.”

Harris tries to keep her environment as safe as possible. She wants to avoid injuries, doctors, religious conflicts and controversy.

Christian Scientists have endured enough controversy, Harris figures. There have been several recent court cases in which the parents of children who died were indicted because they treated their children with prayer rather than medicine.

“I think people are making too big a deal about cases like that,” Harris said. “People think Christian Science is like some kind of cult, that we’re going to make everyone die. That makes us angry.”

Although her teammates were somewhat fascinated by her beliefs when Harris first enrolled at Fullerton, she said religion really hasn’t been an issue at the school, other than the time she got hurt.

“We’re not like other religious types who try to force themselves on people,” Harris said. “If people want to know and ask about it, I’ll tell them, but I’m not going to force it on them.”