Back Injury Leaves Antolin With a New Set of Priorities

Gymnastics is such a seductive sport for women.

It combines strength and grace, allowing women to be both athletes and entertainers. You must have thighs of iron, calves of steel and then you must also point your fingers and toes and you can wiggle your backside to music on the floor exercise tumbling routines. A girl can wear makeup and also have Popeye-sized muscles on her upper arms.

Gymnastics also can be a cruel sport for women.

A sudden growth spurt and, boom, you can’t balance on the beam anymore. The physical demands placed on tiny, growing bodies cause so many stress fractures and backaches, shin splints and sprained necks.

To grow those muscles often means constant aches and pains. And way too often, the little girls dream only of one thing.

With gymnastics, where there are no pro leagues or million-dollar tours, the Olympics is the ultimate goal.

But only seven girls can make an Olympic team, and so the teachers ask, plead, beg sometimes, that the students, so many of them who first come to a gym after they watch an Olympic games, try to do the sport because they love the sport, because gymnastics can give them poise and confidence, can help them stand up straight and become strong.

The little girls are told over and over that earning a college scholarship is an admirable goal too, a worthy achievement.

Tonight, Cal State Fullerton will host the Big West Conference championships in women’s gymnastics. Competing for Fullerton on the uneven bars will be Katie Antolin, a freshman with a face-long smile who walks across campus with a straight back and shoulders thrown back, a freshman with presence.

And Antolin will tell you that six years ago she would not have been happy if you’d told her she would some day be a college freshman able to compete on only one apparatus.

For six years ago, Antolin was a promising little gymnast, having qualified for her first U.S. national team and with every reason to believe she might be a legitimate contender for the 2000 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.

Which is what is happening now for Jeanette Antolin, younger than Katie by 16 months, a junior at Marina High and recently qualified for the U.S. women’s Pan American Games team, a result that stamped Jeanette as a contender for the 2000 Olympic team.

“I am so happy for Jeanette,” said Katie, who turned 19 two weeks ago. “I’m excited for her. I couldn’t believe how exciting it was when she made the Pan-Am team. We’re so close. People ask me all the time if I’m jealous of her, but I’m not. Not at all. I’m just happy for her.”

Nola Antolin, Katie and Jeanette’s mom, gets that question too. Isn’t it hard for Katie to see Jeanette accomplishing all the goals that Katie had?

Nearly a decade ago, when Nola brought Katie and Jeanette to Scats Gymnastics in Huntington Beach to be tested and to see if they were talented enough to be considered for the club’s elite program, Nola was told by the coaches that it was Katie, who is taller and more lithe and long-limbed than Jeanette, who had the more promising future.

For it was Katie who had the same lightness and grace as Olympic medalist Shannon Miller, Nola was told. Little Jeanette was more like a Kim Zmeskal--shorter, squatter, stronger.

The Antolins had lived in Northern California at the time, near Chico where there wasn’t elite training. When the girls showed so much promise and were evaluated so highly at Scats, the Antolins moved to Huntington Beach. And Katie progressed nicely through all the testing stages until she made the national team as a 13-year-old. This was a time of triumph for Katie, and then it became a time of despair.

“My back had been hurting for a while,” Katie said. “It just kept getting worse and worse. At first, nobody would believe me. I had exams and X-rays and nothing would show up.”

Finally, when Katie would be in tears after workouts, when she began dreading practice, an MRI showed a congenital condition. There was nothing to be done, no surgery could correct it.

And as long as Katie didn’t do gymnastics, didn’t participate in the hours of stretching, pounding, necessary elite-level training, her back stopped hurting.

For 2 1/2 years, throughout most of her high school career, Katie gave up the sport she loved.

“I didn’t do a thing in gymnastics,” she said. “Nothing. I tried cheerleading and dance and water polo and swimming. I’m kind of hyper anyway and I tried everything I could think of. But nothing took the place of gymnastics in my heart. I missed it so much.”

During her senior year at Marina, Katie took a tentative trip back to the gym. She tried some basic movements, then some more difficult ones. She began a process of trial and error--finding out what hurt her back and what didn’t.

Julie Knight, Fullerton’s associate head coach, offered Katie a full scholarship based on the hope that Katie was so talented that her performance on even one apparatus, the uneven bars, would be enough to help Fullerton build toward an NCAA appearance.

“I was so thrilled,” Katie said. “We couldn’t afford to pay for college. I’d be at a community college now. I would tell every girl to have realistic goals. For me, now, a college scholarship is everything.”

Katie’s freshman year, unfortunately, has been hindered by a broken foot she suffered when she stepped into a hole while helping move a mat at a meet at Boise State. But the foot is better and Katie will compete Saturday. And by next year, she’s planning on trying to compete on the balance beam as well as bars.

While Katie is talking at Fullerton, a half hour away at Scats, Nola is watching Jeanette working on that other dream.

“All this was really hard on Katie, I know,” Nola says. “But you know that question that everybody asks? Isn’t Katie jealous of Jeanette? I just don’t understand that. Katie loves her sister and we’re both proud of Jeanette. And Jeanette is proud of Katie. Because of Katie, Jeanette would love to be on a college team someday.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com