Absence Makes the Young Gymnasts Grow Stronger : Gymnastics: Two teen-age athletes are learning to deal with improved competition, a new way of life away from home.

You see the family for Christmas, spring break and, usually after the first year anyway, for a good part of the summer.

Sure, there might be a weekend here or there when you can steal a visit, but, for the most part, you are away from home, away from its comforts, its familiar faces and its safe surroundings.

Sounds like your typical college student pursuing higher education, right?

Not quite.

By the time Anne Dixon, 17, and Amber Jamison, 14, start college, they’ll be seasoned veterans in life outside the nest. Already, they are miles--not to mention exorbitant phone bills--away from their loved ones.

But Dixon and Jamison aren’t students at prestigious Eastern boarding schools or victims of dissolved families. They are gymnasts who have left home to pursue athletic careers they hope will earn them college scholarships, at the least. A loftier goal is a place on the national team and the opportunity to participate in events such as World Championships and the Olympics.

Today they are home to compete in the final day of the Winter Holiday Classic Gymnastics Invitational at San Diego State’s Peterson Gym.

Dixon, a junior at Corona del Sol High School in Tempe, Ariz., is the only San Diegan ever to make a U.S. National team in women’s gymnastics.

She has lived separated from her parents and four siblings, who live in Rancho Santa Fe, since September, 1987.

“I used to kid my older brother,” Dixon said from Tempe. “I’d tell him, ‘Ha, you’re still living at home.’ He’s 21 now and a student at UC Santa Barbara, but it does seem kind of weird. I have twin sisters. They were 6 when I left, now they’re 10. They probably think it’s normal for older sisters not to live at home.”

Jamison is new to this lifestyle. She has lived in Temecula, away from her mother, who lives in Paradise Hills, for five months.

Rae Jamison said her daughter’s goal is to win a scholarship, and she wasn’t getting the kind of training she needed when coaches changed at her Santee gym.

“The guy who came in was mainly a boys’ coach,” Rae Jamison said. “So she had to decide if she wanted to be a recreational gymnast or be the best she could be.”

Amber chose the latter, but both she and her mother felt she couldn’t reach her potential if she stayed in San Diego. They decided to enroll Amber at the Southern California Elite Gymnastics Academy, a program rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the top clubs in the nation.

“I’m a single parent,” Rae said. “I knew I couldn’t afford a college education for her. We knew it would be her gymnastics, if that’s what she wanted out of it, that could get it for her.”

Rae Jamison lives close enough that she drives to Temecula every Friday to pick up Amber, then returns her Monday morning. The return trip, when she arrives in San Diego alone, is one of the hardest parts of their separation.

“It’s still hard; she’s the baby,” said Rae, whose other daughter, Teri, is in the Navy and is stationed in Fallon, Nev. “I felt it was a big sacrifice, but we decided we’d be willing to do it for the gymnastics.”

Because of the intense training involved at this level--Amber is a Level 10 gymnast, one level removed from elite--a daily drive to and from Temecula was out of the question.

“I thought about commuting, car-pooling,” Rae said, “but, at her level, they train six days a week. It’s scary to think she’d be on the road that much.”

A small part of Dixon resented having to leave San Diego to get adequate gymnastics training in the first place. She was a member of Aztec Gymnastics, one of four elites in the program. After one went on to college and two quit, Dixon felt if she didn’t switch gyms, she wouldn’t reach her potential.

“I kept thinking, ‘Why doesn’t anyone open a high-level gym there?’ ” she said. “I mean, San Diego’s a nice area. I don’t understand it.”

Dixon, who competes for the Desert Devils, has lived in Arizona since last June, when she left Bela and Marta Karolyi’s gymnastics camp after 2 1/2 years in Houston. The Karolyis coached a hand-picked group of six to eight girls, and Dixon was relegated to what her father, Howard, called the “second tier.”

“Sometimes she went up with Karolyi, but it was very ill-defined how they ended up there,” he said, adding that he and his wife, Donna, were as concerned about her education as her gymnastics. “We felt very strongly about her education. It was important not to get caught up in just the gymnastics side of it. We wanted to make sure the balance wasn’t lost.”

When the concerns surrounding her education equaled those of her gymnastics, the Dixon family sought out the Desert Devils.

“She talked about going to Pennsylvania,” Donna Dixon said, “but we didn’t want her that far away.”

Allowing a child to leave home at such a tender age seems outrageous, and it baffled close friends of both gymnasts’ families. Surely there must be a better solution, they insisted.

“There were some comments about sending her away so young,” Howard said. “But I feel that if they have the capabilities, you have to give them opportunity to try. And if you can’t train at that level locally, you have to look elsewhere.”

Rae Jamison said friends with good intentions criticized Amber’s move, since they felt a single parent could easily make the move as well.

“Their opinion was, ‘I don’t understand why you just don’t move there,’ ” said Rae, a hairdresser in National City. “But I’m self-employed. I’ve worked real hard to establish a business. That’s our security right now. It’s easy for someone who has a husband supporting them to say that, but for me to start fresh, to just up and leave, it wasn’t something I could do.”

Kristie Phillips, another of Karolyi’s Olympic gymnasts, lived with her mother in Houston, away from the rest of their family. That was never an option in the Dixon household.

“When she (left), it was her thing,” Donna said. “There was no question that I would go. I have four other children at home. It wasn’t an issue.”

At times, Donna Dixon and Rae Jamison conceded, having their daughters away from home borders on the unbearable.

“Especially like this week,” said Donna. “She was in the middle of finals, and she was so upset. I felt so helpless. And when my little girls do something and they want to show Annie, she’s not here. . . . “

Said Rae Jamison: “I have to call all the time and ask how are your grades, how’s your body, how are you holding up, are you eating right, how is your Achilles, are you icing before and after gym. Those are things she has to take care of on her own now.”

Being away from home isn’t exactly like “Home Alone” either. Both girls live with families, not entirely unlike their own, and they like where they live, but their “temporary” families can’t replace their own.

“I really like where I live,” said Amber. “But I really liked living with my mom. It’s hard, especially whenever you have a bad day. She was always there, but now she’s not.”

Said Anne: “The family I lived with in Texas was great, but Sundays were always hard because it was the only day we had off and I’d get lonely. Sometimes I talk to my mom and if she’s crying, it makes me start to cry. Then we’re both sitting there crying.”

Friends weren’t always the epitome of understanding either. “They’d ask why. I just wanted to be good,” said Amber.

Anne’s friends tell her she could be the San Diego Section gymnastics champion if she came back to San Diego, where she’d be a junior at Torrey Pines High.

“I have a friend on their gymnastics team, and she used to ask me when I was coming back,” Anne said.

Swimming, diving and ice skating are other sports where athletes sometimes must uproot themselves to refine their skills. Gymnastics is particularly demanding because of the age factor--girls leave home as young a 10--and the importance of top coaching.

Marci Hauser, 28, is co-owner of SCEGA with Kathy Strate. They have three gymnasts, all of whom live close enough to go home on weekends but board with host families.

“It’s much easier for them to live here rather than commute,” Hauser said. “If they’re here, they get home quicker to do homework and they’re able to sleep more.”

Hauser said weekend visits with family make it easier.

“You can go home Friday night if you have a day that doesn’t go well,” Hauser said. “We had a girl from North Carolina, who went home during Christmas, but that was about it. Last summer she went home for knee injury, and she decided to stay. It wasn’t something she was going to do another year.”

But there are pluses that extend outside the gym. Amber is developing self-esteem and maturing quickly according to Rae.

“Her attitude is better,” she said. “Amber was immature for her age, shy and withdrawn. I was concerned because schoolwork and gym were the only things she was responsible for. But she’s adjusted tremendously. If anything, she’s grown up.”

Donna said her daughter is better adjusted than most teen-agers.

“She has the usual problems . . . her hair, boys, things like that,” she said. “But I think she’s happier than most girls her age. It was just something we felt we should do for her. She needed to know how good she could be.”