Publicly, it would seem Missy Marlowe's gymnastics career was always on a high, one that culminated - days ago (April 24-25) in Minnesota when she won nearly every NCAA championship known to woman and established a few more NCAA records, too.
Privately, Marlowe remembers her gymnastics life a little differently - the anxieties that made her inconsistent as a budding international star, the 11th-place finish at the 1988 Championships of the USA that almost doomed her Olympic chances, a broken wrist, back stress fracture, chronic shin splints, the struggle at the University of Utah to regain the form and desire she lost in just three stale months following the 1988 Olympics."There were enough disappointments to make me truly appreciate the great parts," says Marlowe, now officially retired.
"People say `storybook career,"' she says, quoting mainly from Ute coach Greg Marsden. "The reason it was `storybook' is there were so many disappointments that the highlights are even higher.
"Those disappointments," she says, "were what made making the Olympic team seem almost like a miracle, so much better. I didn't go into the Olympic Trials (1988, Salt Lake City) as a shoo-in. That made it even better."
(Marlowe had to move up from 11th in the Championships, the first portion of the Olympic Trials, to sixth in the Trials themselves in the Salt Palace to earn a place on the team that would eventually place fourth at Seoul, Korea. Before her hometown fans, she did just that in competition with such names as Phoebe Mills, Kristie Phillips, Hope Spivey, Kelly Garrison-Steves, Chelle Stack, Brandy Johnson and Rhonda Faehn. She beat out Faehn and Phillips for the sixth team spot.
"It was almost like I managed to break through or come through in the clench," Marlowe says.
"I guess I was saving it for when it really mattered most. Olympic Trials it really mattered, and this nationals it really mattered, and I couldn't have asked for more," she says.
At St. Paul, Minn., on April 24 in the 1992 NCAA Championships, Marlowe won the all-around title with a career-high score of 39.65, breaking Spivey's NCAA Championships meet record by .125, to lead Utah to its eighth national championship.
The next night, a weary Marlowe tied for fifth on vault (Ute Kristen Kenoyer tied for that championship), then ended it all by winning uneven bars, tying for balance beam and winning floor exercise in an unprecendented showing. (UCLA's Sharon Shapiro won all five individual titles in the 1980 AIAW Championships.)
Marlowe's four titles in one meet are an NCAA record, her three event titles in one night are a record, her five career NCAA titles (also beam 1991) are an NCAA record, her 9.975 on floor is a championships record and her 9.9 on beam tied the championships record.
All that comes on top of a season in which Marlowe became the only woman in NCAA history to have scored perfect 10s in all four events.
For her performances, Marlowe becomes Deseret News Athlete of the Month for April - the third straight month she's won the award.
April was "a fitting ending," says Marsden, whose Saturday gym classes at the university influenced a little girl named Missy to become a gymnast and who has seen her come "full circle.
"From my perspective," he says, "she came in (to Utah) a confused little girl with a lot of problems after she'd reached her lifelong goal, the Olympics, and she's grown up as a person."
One day after winning everything in sight in St. Paul, "it was back to reality," Marlowe says. She returned to classes and found she needed to catch up. "There was a lot of excitement at first, and that's died down a little, although people still stop me every day and say `That was great,"' she says.
Now she's looking forward to Saturday's tape-delayed telecast of the NCAA Championships on CBS-TV at 3 p.m. "I didn't get to see routines even on our own team," she says. She was always busy warming up her own.
"I think she's enjoying her accomplishments," says Marsden, "but she's confused about what to do."
Marlowe has three classes left after this quarter to complete her exercise and sports science major. Since they're only offered at select times and she must take a full load to keep her scholarship, it will take her another year to graduate. She hopes to intern this summer with a television station to see if she enjoys reporting the news instead of making it, but her real goal is to become a personal trainer.
Many people familiar with Marlowe's name but not the rigors of gymnastics ask her if she'll try out for the 1992 Olympics, but that's an emphatic no.
"The priorities are different in my life now," she says. It's time to become a normal person, to graduate and work and be Mike Anglesey's wife. "Suppose I were to make the next Olympics? Then what?" she says. "I'd have to go back to college and two years later I'd be trying to decide what I want to do."
Besides, she says, "I've already done that." And if she didn't make the team - and she doubts she would because the youngsters are so advanced and she'd have to learn compulsory routines - her career would end on a downer. This way, it's a storybook.