America's elite women gymnasts go through a strange life cycle. The competitive pressure comes when they are junior high and high school age. The fun comes later.
Hope Spivey left her home in Virginia and moved to Allentown, Pa. , in 1984, when she was 13. Spivey trained with coach Donna Strauss at the Parkettes Gymnastics Club. Spivey became the third-ranked gymnast on the U.S. Olympic team in 1988.Now, she is a sophomore at the University of Georgia, soon to turn 21 and apparently having the best time of her life. "I feel like a real student," Spivey said. "I'm part of what's going on at the university."
Spivey spent more than four years in Allentown. The elite members of the Parkettes attended classes at the private academy. "We would miss a week of school when we were competing in a meet," Spivey said. "It wasn't a traditional type of schooling. College academics have been hard work for me. I've had to develop a new approach to studying.' "
Spivey did attend a public high school in Virginia for 1 1-2 years after the Olympics. "People made a big deal out of me being an Olympian," Spivey said. "I just wanted to be a normal student. Eventually, that happened. I wouldn't change anything. I would do it the same way. I loved gymnastics. I loved performing. I still do."
On reflection, Spivey might change one thing: The coach of the '88 Olympic team would have been someone other than Bela Karolyi, the Romanian who has become America's most famous gymnastics coach.
"He is not my kind of person," Spivey said. "He doesn't care about you. He is only worried about what you can do for him. He cared as much about me as a person as he cared about a chair. My coach was the assistant with the Olympic team. When Karolyi told me something, I said, 'OK, fine,' and then I would go ask Donna Strauss what I should do."
There was no such tension in evidence on this afternoon at the Bulldog Gymnastics center, a converted gymnasium in a yellow brick building in the middle of campus. "It's old, but it's all ours and we love it here," said Suzanne Yoculan, the Georgia coach. "We have such a talented, dedicated group of athletes this year that it's a thrill for me to come to practice every day ... to see what they want to try next."
Spivey is the defending NCAA all-around champion. Georgia's other all-arounders are junior Heather Stepp and Agina Simpkins, a freshman and the only collegiate gymnast still a candidate for this summer's U.S. Olympic team.