Woman in a Bubble Vaults Into Bruinhood

The hand-printed blue sign on the wall read “Orientation,” as did the faces of flustered teenagers hurrying through UCLA’s Morgan Center on Friday toward their brave new freshman world.

A tiny one stayed behind, turned right, walked into a news conference room and onto a stage.

“I’m in a little box,” Kerri Strug said.

Then she opened up a smile that engulfed her face, grabbed at her thimble-sized earrings.

It was the smile of someone hoping to climb out.

While her peers were being introduced to campus Friday, UCLA’s most famous enrollee in freshman English was being introduced to life.

“You know, I’m thinking about joining a sorority,” she said, emphasizing the word sorority as if were Christmas. “I’m thinking about being . . . normal.”

On her first post-Olympic visit to her new home, gymnast Kerri Strug didn’t want to think about the recent vault that landed her ankle-deep in American culture.

She didn’t want to revel in the attention that has included 50 phone calls an hour since her July 23 feat on a torn ankle completed the U.S. team’s gold-medal performance.

She didn’t want to brag that Rosie O’Donnell gave her a home phone number, and Jason Priestly sat with her at lunch.

She didn’t even feel much like discussing her ultimate honor, that healthy young gymnasts everywhere are showing up these days with bandages on their left ankles.

There were more important things to ponder.

Like dates.

She may be the first 18-year-old to appear on “The Tonight Show” who has never had a real date.

“There was this nice boy who took her to a cotillion a couple of years ago,” said her mother, Melanie. “But he was a gymnast. And it was set up.”

Kerri sighed. “I’ve got a lot of learning to do in the boy department.”

And like parties.

She is rarely even in the vicinity of liquor--she hates the smell--and she is usually in bed by the time the music is turned up.

“I’m really not good in the social department,” she said.

Like late-night cruises with buddies, drives that go nowhere and everywhere.

“All of these things you are talking about, you might as well be talking to a wall,” she said. “I’ve never done any of that stuff.”

She paused and laughed. “Yet.”

Agent Leigh Steinberg said he has never had such a celebrated client have such an invisible past.

“This is a girl in a bubble,” he said.

Before her vault carried her from anonymity to a national symbol, Strug had never even worn makeup.

“Who was I going to wear it for--Bela?” she said, referring to her coach, Bela Karolyi.

Between visits with the president--literally--Strug slowed long enough Friday to offer a rare glimpse into this athlete whose simple courage captured our imagination by making her larger than life.

The glimpse revealed that our imagination is vivid indeed.

If possible, she seems smaller than her listed 4-foot-9, 88-pound frame. In a black jacket, black skirt, black shoes and pale skin, she is a walking China doll.

And she knows it.

“I wish I could put on a few inches,” she said. “In gymnastics, my size is fine. In the real world, I’m . . . very short.”

If possible, her voice has even more of that nails-on-a-blackboard quality that has caused even admirers to cringe.

This, too, she knows.

“In high school, all the guys would say, ‘Oh, you’re so cute but you talk like this!’ ” she said, imitating their imitations. “I always said, ‘What do you want? My voice fits my size.’ It would be weird if somebody this short had a deep voice, wouldn’t it?”

More than anything, though, the impression of Strug while accompanying her on morning visits to TV stations and UCLA was this:

The Bruins have never enrolled a bigger star who is not one.

For that, they should be congratulated.

This is no polished Mary Lou Retton. This is no street-savvy Carl Lewis.

This is a woman who takes all of her photos with a disposable camera because she tried a regular camera once.

“At the Olympics in Barcelona, my parents gave me a real nice camera, I took all these photos . . . and nothing came out because I had put the film in wrong,” she said. “I said, never again.”

This is a woman who did not bring her gold medal on her Friday tour, much to the dismay of everyone she met.

“It’s back at the hotel in my suitcase,” she said, shrugging. “I didn’t think anybody would care.”

This is a woman whose parents have had the same listed phone number in Tucson for 19 years, and who will not change it despite receiving approximately one phone call per minute during the Olympics.

“None of us are still believing what has happened to our lives,” said Dr. Burt Strug, a Tucson surgeon. “It’s just so hard to comprehend.”

Although she cannot compete for UCLA’s gymnastics team because she has decided to spend weekends on a professional tour, Strug will attend practices as a volunteer assistant coach and stage exhibitions during some home matches.

When she does, she will be unique in another way.

She will probably be the only one on the mat who is not receiving a scholarship.

For now, the parents of UCLA’s most famous freshman are paying her way.

“I just hope people like me for me,” Strug said.

As if there is any chance they won’t.