DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Sophomore Kristin Parker, who finished 10th in the all-around in last year's NCAA championships, hopes to top that feat this year.
By Adam Karon
Daily Bruin Staff
Take a trip to Pauley Pavilion for a UCLA gymnastics meet and you will see the bleachers teeming with youngsters in a barrage of colored uniforms. Tiny girls, dressed up in their club colors, stare in awe at the UCLA gymnasts. One look into their hopeful eyes says it all: “I want to be like her.”
But the path to Division I college athletics is not easy, and many girls grow tired of the long hours and strict commitment that come with competing at the highest level. The dreaded “burnout” may occur more in gymnastics than any other sport.
Just ask Kristin Parker.
Like many young girls, Parker enrolled in gymnastics shortly after she learned to walk. She started at the age of three and was training intensively by the time she was eight.
As she grew older, the training became more and more concentrated.
“I was doing the 5:30 a.m. morning practices as well as night practices,” Parker said. “That was definitely the path to get burned out.”
Parker’s path seemed to near its end when a change in coaching style drove the 13-year-old beyond her limit, resulting in a much-needed vacation from gymnastics.
Giving up something that consumed so much of her time and energy for so many years was devastating. Parker still loved the sport, but she needed the break.
For many, this might have been a dead end. For Parker, it was just the beginning.
Although coping with her two-year absence from gymnastics was difficult, Parker now sees the break as a defining period in her career.
“It was the best thing for me,” she said. “I came back with a totally new perspective on gymnastics.”
Her new perspective has propelled the Hanford, Calif., native into the upper echelons of college gymnastics. Parker is currently fifth in the nation on vault and 17th in the floor exercise. But it is her attitude, gained in part through her two-year hiatus, that catches her coach’s attention.
“She has a tremendous work ethic that is a great example to everyone else,” said Head Coach Valorie Kondos Field.
This is not always the case with athletes who take time off from their sport.
“I think two years off could have gone both ways,” Kondos Field said. “She could have really enjoyed not having the responsibility and the physical commitment.”
Parker agrees. She believes that most gymnasts who start training young opt not to compete later in life because they do not want to miss out on a “normal” adolescent experience.
During her time off, Parker discovered it was the training itself that she missed most. She took up dance, but it did not interest her like gymnastics.
“If we got out early I’d sneak into the gym and do some stuff,” Parker said.
The break taught her the importance of maintaining her life outside gymnastics and enabled her to re-enter the sport with a rekindled fire for training.
“(Gymnastics) just starts defining who you are, which is inevitable,” Parker said. “I found that there are so many things out there, so many things I want to do with my life.”
Despite her new outlook, returning to the gym was not as easy as Parker envisioned.
“It was different because I wasn’t just a 12-year-old squirt throwing my body around,” Parker said. “That made it hard to get skills back.”
She credits her faith and family with helping her during the difficult years outside of the gym.
Teammate Alyssa Beckerman credits Parker’s mindset and hard work.
“She’s one of the most optimistic people I’ve ever met,” Beckerman said. “She puts in 110 percent every workout, and it shows when she competes.”
Of the girls Parker trained with as a child, nearly all have given up competitive gymnastics, which Parker says is not unusual. Some people are lured away by possibilities outside the boundaries of intense training and competition.
Others are subject to overbearing coaches blinded by red, white and blue, who believe they have the next Olympic champion under their control.
“Usually the coaches don’t understand that you have to work hard, but work hard to have fun too,” Kondos Field said. She added that the gym should be a place where the hard work translates into enjoyment.
Unfortunately, many young girls are forced out of the sport by screaming coaches and parental pressure before they have the chance to realize how fun gymnastics can be.
“After you burn out, coming back is definitely a test of your love for the sport,” Beckerman said.
Parker has no regrets about returning to the gym. Perhaps even more importantly, she has no regrets about her two years off.
“As difficult as some of the things I went through were, I learned so much that I wouldn’t change one thing about it,” she said.
Her time off inspired her to work with disabled children, which she plans on pursuing after graduation. Parker will be ready when her time comes to leave the sport. She has done it once, and she can do it again.
Before she leaves, however, the Bruins have some business to finish. Parker already has one team national championship under her belt, and the 2001 Bruins are on pace to repeat. The team has drawn record crowds this year, and is beginning to gain more national respect as the best program in the country.
Hopefully the young girls who flood Pauley Pavilion and wait after meets for autographs view Parker as an example of how to cope when the pressure of the sport gets too intense.
They can learn that when training becomes too much, a little break can make the difference.