The Dangers Hit Home for Coach : Family: Terry Davis used to urge his young wrestlers to keep off the weight. Then his teen-age daughter almost died of anorexia nervosa.

Like many wrestling coaches, Terry Davis often placed tremendous emphasis on weight. How much does that boy weigh? Can he lose five pounds by Friday? Didn’t I tell that kid not to go an ounce over 130?

Davis, a longtime youth coach now in his first year at Whittier Christian High in La Habra, used to consider weight to be nearly as important as performance. But his outlook has changed.

In the last year, Davis and his wife, Candy, have watched their 16-year-old daughter, Heather, fight her way back from anorexia nervosa, a potentially fatal eating disorder that causes victims to starve themselves.

Heather, a junior at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, says her anorexia was triggered last fall when she decided to lose weight for a school play. But the foundation for the disease--from which she believes she is nearly recovered--was established years before in gymnastics.

Heather began gymnastics at 8. She said gymnasts who weighed more than the coach wanted them to had to pay the coach $1 for every pound they were over.

Heather said the pressure to stay slim--along with subtle pressures her parents placed on her to succeed--led her to quit gymnastics at 13 and turn to cheerleading and ballet. But ballet brought on additional body consciousness.

It wasn’t until last fall, after quitting dancing and watching her 5-6 frame fill out to 130 pounds, that Heather decided to diet. A school musical was coming up. She wanted to lose 20 pounds. When she reached her goal weight of 110--by eating smaller, healthier meals--she was deluged with compliments. She decided to lose more weight.

But simply cutting back on her intake didn’t seem to take the weight off any more. She had seen a TV movie about a woman with bulimia. She decided to try bingeing and purging.

“I just wish I never tried it--not even once,” she said. “It’s very, very addictive.”

But as many bulimics find out, the purging, Heather said, never results in weight loss. So she would try to stop eating altogether.

Davis realized his daughter had a problem when the family vacationed together in Texas. Each time the family sat down to eat, Heather wanted only salad with nonfat dressing. And she rarely ate even that. The next week, with her mother at her side and her father lifting weights a few yards away, Heather passed out during an aerobics class.

The Davises took Heather--then 88 pounds--to an inpatient treatment center in Santa Ana. Davis said an attendant told him there was nothing to worry about. Heather should get outside counseling, the woman said. And she should eat.

“She said, ‘You don’t have a razor to your wrist so we don’t need you to be in the hospital,’ ” Heather said.

The next day, the Davises took their daughter to an Anaheim hospital reputed to specialize in eating-disorder treatments. After a brief examination, doctors moved Heather into the hospital’s intensive-care unit. They told Terry Davis that had he waited two more days his daughter would not have survived.

Heather stayed in the hospital’s psychiatric unit for three weeks. She was released, but after three days at home, she relapsed. She stopped eating, her weight dropped to 85 pounds and her parents rushed her back to the Anaheim hospital. After one week, she was taken by ambulance to Rader Institute, an eating disorders clinic in Redondo Beach. Davis said doctors at the Anaheim hospital recommended the move.

“They realized it was beyond them,” Davis said.

Heather stayed at Rader Institute for 30 days. Terry and Candy Davis were allowed to visit two hours each Sunday and take part in family therapy sessions two nights a week. “I’m still on shaky ground,” Heather said. “. . . It’s not like you just forget about it.”

Davis says the ordeal made him rethink his philosophy on weight with regard to wrestling. Because wrestlers compete in various weight classes, some go to extremes--crash diets, vomiting, laxative use, severe dehydration--to “cut weight” a few days before competition.

“Purging is the beast that has wrestling by the throat,” Davis said. “As coaches, we have helped promote eating disorders.”

Davis is helping to form a sports nutrition committee of medical experts to help Orange County wrestling coaches prevent eating disorders, and has invited a nutritionist to speak to his Whittier Christian team. Davis says he no longer tells a boy how much to weigh but asks the boy to determine what’s best for him.

“I don’t care if it means the difference of winning a championship,” Davis said. “Sometimes, as coaches, we let our athletes’ fantasies run loose.”