The Best Team No One Knows : Titan Women Won Big West Gymnastics Title; Next Stop: NCAA West Regional

The chalkboard’s message provided the backdrop on the first day of practice after the performance of the year.

“CSUF, Big West Champs ’93.”

Cal State Fullerton Coach Lynn Rogers is watching his athletes take turns on the uneven parallel bars. He is asking Cristi Clifford what’s wrong. Then he’s telling Celeste Delia she’s not being aggressive enough. And then he’s telling a joke.

“Did you hear the one about. . . .”

Did you hear about the gymnastics team in your own back yard? They’re ranked 17th in the nation following their conference victory Saturday. Folks who live down the block on State College Boulevard don’t know. Students in the next building don’t know about the 10 women in leotards who are providing a little national exposure for the Titans.

One week from today, they will be competing in Corvallis, Ore., at the West Regional, trying to advance to the NCAA Championships for the 14th time in Rogers’ 18 years as coach.

It won’t be easy. The winner from each of the five regionals advance, along with seven at-large teams. Oregon State and UCLA--ranked fourth and fifth nationally--appear to be too talented to catch. Rogers thinks Fullerton, the third-seeded team in the regionals, is vying for one of the last three spots in the field of 12.

“Last year, Stanford was in our position and they got that last at-large berth,” Rogers said, “and they wound up finishing 10th.”

But Stanford had some depth. That is not a luxury with the injury-riddled Titans. Natalie Meyer and Francine Garrett have knee injuries. Brandi Baldasano is coming off a broken hand. Kristi Mardyn, a sprained ankle.

In upsetting Utah State for the conference championship, Fullerton competed in two of the four events with only five competitors instead of the usual six. The top five scores count toward the team total, and the Titans--with little margin for error--hit every performance.

The pressure to perform just as well at the regionals will be just as great, not just on standouts Delia, Clifford and Karena Mills, who swept the top three all-around spots in the conference meet, but on everyone--Troi Candelaria, Tammi Bories, Mardyn and Paige Peterman. Their fate will be determined by tenths of a point.

“I’ve coached teams that I thought should win (the national championship) and I’ve coached teams that have won it (in 1979),” Rogers said. “I would really love for this team to get back to the NCAAs, whether it be this year or next year.

“This is the kind of team that has worked hard enough to get there and would appreciate it in the proper perspective. I’ve coached teams that didn’t appreciate it and didn’t understand it for what it was worth and all that it was. And I would love to see this team get back to the finals. They’re such deserving young people. If not this year, I hope next year. And I sort of have the sense that they will.”

There’s good reason for Rogers to believe his team will return after missing the regionals last year--a first for his program. This is a team comprised of battlers, women who know how to come back--because they have.

One need look no further than Delia, Clifford and Mills.

Proposition 48. There’s a stigma that goes with the label, and Delia, 20, carried it with her when she arrived on campus in the fall of 1990.

Unable to practice with the team because she did not fulfill Proposition 48’s eligibility requirements--she was short on the math requirement and the Scholastic Aptitude Test score--she hit the books. But while she concentrated on academics, she let herself go physically. She added 10 pounds to her 5-foot-3 frame. She lost some of her skills and became increasingly frustrated by not being able to perform the way she was accustomed.

But she got her clearance to join the team in July ’91.

“Since then,” assistant coach Julie Garcia said, “she has been unstoppable. It’s not luck--she’s responsible for every success she has had.”

And the successes have been many. She won the Big West all-around title last year and won again in the championships Saturday, when she tied or set three school records--for the vault (9.90), floor exercise (9.95) and all-around score (39.35). She also tied her previous best on the uneven parallel bars (9.8), the only event in which she doesn’t at least share the school record.

Delia is ranked 16th nationally in all-around scoring average (39.00) and is tied for 20th on the vault (9.82).

“The summer of ’91 was really hard,” Delia said. “You can’t do the skills you’re used to doing, you’re overweight and out of shape. You’re thinking, ‘This is really hard--why do I want to do this?’ But I knew it would pay off so I didn’t quit. It was a hard comeback. It wasn’t easy.”

During the last two semesters, she compiled a 3.25 grade-point average. Now a junior, she is Fullerton’s Big West Conference scholar-athlete of the year.

“Now,” Delia said, “gymnastics is not the most important thing in my life.”

She beat the stigma.

*

Freshman Cristi Clifford moved 80 minutes away from her home in Everett, Wash., just so she could attend a better club gymnastics program in Puyallup. She moved in with a new family, trained five hours a night, competed extensively on weekends and, by her own admission, “had to give up my friends and family.”

She was 15 years old.

When she arrived at Fullerton, she brought with her impressive credentials and the desire to be an All-American--finishing in the top eight at the NCAA Finals--as a freshman. She had finished second on the balance beam at an international meet in France, and 23rd overall at the 1991 Elite National Championships.

But she struggled her first semester and lacked the consistency the coaching staff expected. She was making that difficult adjustment to college life, of being on her own and dealing with her own money. She had time on her hands and the pressure of her peers.

“I never had a social life and now I was having fun and going out with my friends,” Clifford said. “I was like a real teen-ager. I feel like I’ve grown up real fast this last year. It’s been fun and a real learning experience.”

Well, it wasn’t all fun for the 19-year-old. Her priorities changed and she lost sight of why she was in school. Gymnastics and training weren’t as important, and she was dogged by nagging injuries because of it. And she didn’t breeze through classes as she had in high school.

It got the attention of Rogers, who takes great pride in his team’s 3.08 GPA--the highest of any program at Fullerton. Clifford’s mother, Connie, also noticed. Both talked to her.

They got through.

“I had to think back about all the blood, sweat and tears I had gone through and all that was in store for me,” she said. “Knowing Coach was behind me and knowing that he knew I was there and wanted me to do well, that helped a lot in changing my attitude.

“I sat down with him. I told him some things that he did that bothered me, and he told me some things that I did that bothered him. And then we talked like two friends instead of gymnast and coach. The next day, I came in with this great new attitude. I came in ready to learn and take directions.”

She raised her GPA from 2.3 to 3.5. She’s tied for 19th nationally on the balance beam (9.79).

Her drive to be an All-American is back.

*

Perhaps nothing is more difficult on a coach than watching his athletes deal with grief. Karena Mills’ season crumbled last year when her grandmothers passed away within months of each other.

“I think that affected the gym and affected every aspect of my life,” said Mills, a junior. “It was tough.”

She sought out a campus sports psychologist, Ken Ravizza. His message to her, she said, was that “when you lose someone close to you, the thing that is most insecure in your life falls apart first.”

In this case, it was a trick on the uneven parallel bars, the tkatchev. She simply couldn’t do it any more.

“One day it was there,” Rogers said, “and one day it wasn’t.”

That frustration affected the rest of her routines.

“I lost a lot of confidence,” Mills said. “In gymnastics, you have a lot of control with your body, but when your mind shuts your body down, it’s hard to deal with--you don’t feel like you have that control.”

And she didn’t.

Mills, 20, returned to Maineville, Ohio, outside Cincinnati, over the summer and worked with her former coaches. She slowly regained her confidence.

“I was burned out by excess stress,” Mills said. “It took a great emotional toll on me. It made me look at life differently than I had looked at it before.”

But coaches didn’t expect much of her this season.

“We let her establish her role on the team instead of trying to place too high of an expectation on her,” Rogers said, “and she’s exceeded our expectations.”

Her 9.75 on the bars in the conference championships matched her previous season best in that event.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I came back,” Mills said. “I had had a rough year the year before. I trained hard over the summer and I’ve gone through a lot of changes, so it was a new experience for me. And I’ve just kind of enjoyed it as I’ve gone along.”

So has Rogers.

*

Fullerton was ranked fifth in the country before injuries took their toll.

When Brandi Baldasano--a freshman who is Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda’s second cousin--broke her hand in February, she had the highest all-around average on the team.

Sophomore Francine Garrett had finished seventh at the World University Games when she blew out her knee three weeks into the 1992 season. Despite major surgery to repair the knee, she is determined to compete on the beam and the vault, her two best events, next year.

The Titans are made up of three juniors, a sophomore and six freshmen.

Fittingly, everyone is coming back.