Sincharoen Is a Real Gym Dandy

Sirinda Sincharoen knocks on the door. Nobody answers for a moment, but soon she is allowed to slip inside the dormitory room.

She moves stealthily, spreading streamers, balloons and flyers around the room of an unsuspecting teammate on the University of California women’s gymnastics team.

Sincharoen also leaves behind some written motivational phrases.

One of them alludes to getting past the NCAA West Regional that begins at 6 p.m. today at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.

It reads: “Dreaming of Nationals. Make it Happen.”

Sincharoen and four other Valley-region gymnasts will compete in the regional.

Christine Nishimoto of Cleveland High and Kelly Webster of North Hollywood are teammates of Sincharoen. Stanford’s Linda Chun (Van Nuys) and Cal State Sacramento’s Rebecca Seebirt (Nordhoff) are also scheduled to perform.

Before she started sneaking into teammates’ rooms as a senior captain on the Golden Bears, Sincharoen, a graduate of La Canada High, lived through a nightmarish time that started at the Pacific-10 Conference championships in March of 1994.

Her floor exercise routine, performed to music from “Carmen,” was going smoothly.

When she landed a little short the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee snapped.

End of routine, end of season.

End of career?

Sincharoen had surgery, which didn’t entirely solve the problem.

“They say two out of every 100 [ACL] surgeries have a hard time and I was one of them,” she said.

She was on crutches for a month, but the real challenge began that summer: rehabilitation.

Sincharoen recalls her efforts to regain range of motion and flexibility as torturous.

“[The trainers] set me on a table face down,” Sincharoen said. “Then they’d take my right leg and bend it back.”

Sometimes, they strapped her leg down onto her back for 15 minutes. “I remember holding the stopwatch, asking, ‘Can I get out? Please?’ ” she said.

Sincharoen competed in about half of Cal’s meets as a junior in 1995, but didn’t feel like herself.

“I still wasn’t healthy,” she said. “I hoped that I was going to be back, but my knee was still slow. It was impossible.”

After last season, Sincharoen went back into rehabilitation. Her passion this time was weightlifting. Along with her strength, her confidence improved. So did her scores.

In the season finale against Stanford, she earned a score of 9.7 on the uneven bars, tying a career best. However, Cal trailed the Cardinal before Sincharoen’s performance in the floor exercise.

In her new routine, the music is different--a selection from the movie “Pulp Fiction”--as is the ending--a single twist instead of a double. But she never performed a routine any better. Her score was a career-best 9.8, helping Cal to a 194.10-193.05 victory.

“I think it finally paid off,” Sincharoen said. “I hope so. I was in the training room for so many hours.”

Which is not to say that Sincharoen’s injury is completely healed. When the weather turns sour, her knee tightens up. The injury also flares up if she sits too long.

But Sincharoen, whose brother Gewin this season earned all-conference honors for Cal as a sophomore, has few complaints. She’s just happy to be competing again.

“I don’t feel like I need to go out and prove myself,” she said. “I can just go out and relax.”

Cal is seeded fifth among seven teams in the West Regional, with the top team in each of five regionals advancing to the national championships April 25-27, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Seven other teams receive at-large bids based on regional scores.

The math may not be in the Golden Bears’ favor, but they can always draw from another of Sincharoen’s motivational phrases:

“Go Hard or Go Home.”