All-Around Success for Dimas : Gymnastics: East Germans score team victory, but unheralded Nebraskan steals the show.

The Americans lost to the East Germans in a men’s gymnastics meet here Sunday, but for U.S. Gymnastics Federation officials, not all was lost. They found a new star.

Trent Dimas, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Nebraska, wasn’t even invited to this meet. His coach at Nebraska, Francis Allen, pulled some strings to get him in. Then Dimas, unranked and unexpectedly good, beat the 10th-ranked gymnast in the world, East German Sylvio Kroll, to win the all-around title.

“I’m as happy now as I was when our team won the NCAA championship last week,” Dimas said, referring to Nebraska’s victory at Minnesota. “I wasn’t even supposed to be at this meet, I wasn’t invited.”

Dimas entered the last event, the high bar, trailing Kroll by .35 points. Kroll, East Germany’s top gymnast in the meet, fell on his first release move and scored a 9.2.

Dimas, the last gymnast to perform, stuck a flawless triple back-flip on his dismount to score a 9.8. and delight a crowd of 1,500 at the Mid-South Coliseum.

Dimas finished with 57.75 points. Kroll had 57.50 and East German Andre Hempel 57.25. UCLA’s Chainey Umphrey, who was closing in on third place before the high bar, fell and finished sixth.

Dimas won the high bar, scored a 9.75 on the parallel bars, a 9.6 on vault, a 9.55 both on the rings and the pommel horse, and a 9.5 on floor. Nothing spectacular, just consistent.

The United States won two events, the vault and the high bar, but could not keep up with East Germany, which won by 1.45 points, 284.80 to 283.35. To put this in perspective, however, the East Germans finished second to the Soviet Union at the 1989 World Championships. The United States tied for eighth.

East Germany took the lead from the beginning, outscoring the United States by .60 points after the first event, the floor exercise.

But the pommel horse proved costly for the United States, which fell behind by 1.95 points after Jeff Lutz and David St. Pierre each fell and scored 8.4 and 8.85, respectively.

A solid performance on the rings helped, but the United States was still outscored by .15 points. Umphrey scored the highest, 9.7, with a full-twisting, double-back flip dismount in a pike position.

On the vault, the Americans outscored the East Germans to move to within 1.7 points. Lutz earned a 9.75 with his Kasamatsu--a cartwheel onto the vault--with a 1 1/2 twist.

Dimas, who performed a Yurchenko layout with a full twist, earned a 9.6. On a Yurchenko vault, a gymnast does a round-off onto the springboard, and a back handspring over the vault. It’s a vault performed more by women than men, because the vault is turned lengthwise in men’s gymnastics.

On the parallel bars, two falls by Lutz and Dominick Minicucci, who is coming back from an injury, put the United States behind by 2.9 points with only the high bar remaining. Even though the United States won the final event, it couldn’t make up the deficit.

In the all-around, Lutz finished 10th and Minicucci finished last.

Also competing for the United States was Mark Warburton, who finished fourth, and alternate Jarrod Hanks, who finished ninth.