Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Kelsey Stillinger (right) chats with Olympian Amy Chow.

Golden Glow

Though Amy Chow trains here, most don't aim for Olympic Games

By Chantal Lamers

Gymnasts in leotards spring across blue floor mats while others cartwheel across balance beams. Occasionally, someone falls, but most of the time these gymnasts land on two feet.

West Valley Gymnastics School may seem unimposing, housed as it is in an industrial area of Campbell. But during last summer's Olympic Games, the school grabbed the world's attention when its star student, Amy Chow, brought home the gold.

Five days a week, some 1,500 gymnasts come to the school to learn and perfect their skills and to challenge themselves.

Inside the building, autographed photographs of the 1996 gold medalist on the U.S. women's gymnastics team hang alongside newspaper clippings and magazine covers of team member Chow. Many of the students--particularly the bright-eyed beginners--don "Amy Chow goes to my gym" T-shirts.

Although the stereotype is that all young gymnasts aspire to the Olympics, WVG coach Diane Amos says that, in fact, most of the young women in the school look at gymnastics as an extracurricular activity. Most are academically oriented and don't want to spend the 30-40 hours a week in the gym required for the most elite level of competition.

Monte Sereno resident Kelsey Stillinger is a case in point.

Stillinger, a level-10 gymnast, took first place May 2 in national competition on the balance beam. But the Los Gatos High School junior says she's not in training for the 2000 Olympics because she wants to focus on finishing high school and going to college.

Nevertheless, she continues to work out 25 hours a week. It's not because she wants an Olympic gold medal; she's simply fallen in love with the sport. "I've always done it for fun," Kelsey says, referring to the 10 years she's been enrolled at WVG. "I've always liked sports," she says, "so when I was little, my mom signed me up."

The hard work that has built up muscles and determination in girls like Kelsey has been done in long days and hundreds of hours in the gym.

On a school day, Kelsey wakes up at 7:30 a.m. to practice piano and get ready for the long day ahead.

At 8:30 a.m. she leaves the house and, after school, gets to the gym by 3 p.m.

Almost five hours later, Kelsey is home eating dinner and doing homework before she goes to bed. The next day, she'll repeat this routine. "It's easy spending so much time at the gym," she says. "It's where most of my best friends are."

On her two days off, Kelsey says she likes to play on the trampoline in her back yard with her father.

Her mother, Diane, says her daughter has always been very physical, and when she not in the gym, she's in the pool, swimming. "I think it's wonderful she has a passion for physical activity, and I hope she can one day incorporate that into a career."

Despite her busy schedule, Kelsey and some of her friends from the gym still find time to volunteer for the Special Olympics. "It makes you feel really good that you're doing something for somebody else," she says.

Mark Young, who has owned the gym since 1981, says that although he was never very good at the sport himself, he's managed to bring out the potential in his students.

"I feel a great deal of satisfaction," Young says. "We work really hard."

Spending nearly 12 hours a day at the gym certainly has its rewards and it consequences, Young says. "It was easier when I was young and I had no family," he says. "A lot of the time, I'm up and to the gym before my kids wake up, and I'm home after they've already gone to bed."

As a result, he says, he and his 30 other coaches and their students often consider each other extended family. "Parents are sometimes envious that I spend more time with their kids than they do," he adds.

There are, however, the rewards. Young has been Chow's coach since she was 3. "It was quite an experience," Young says of last summer's Olympics in Atlanta. "It's something a lot of competitive coaches dream about, including me."

Young says Chow's success affected his students in a positive way, proving that success isn't out of reach. "She's just a person working out every day. Kelsey is one of the people that grew up with her."

At the national competition where Kelsey won her medal, WVG had six girls participating, the second-most representatives in the country.

Coach Amos says that most of the girls could do the same tricks as Chow.

"Everything you see on television is done in this gym," she adds, watching her level-8 class do split leaps across blue floor mats. "The goal of getting these girls to the Olympics is very secondary to watching them achieve their own personal goals."

Ten-year-old Saratoga resident Alina Liao, dressed in a red, white and blue leotard, smiles when she explains that she was just moved up from level 6 to level 8 owing to her improvement. It's been four years since Alina begin taking gymnastic lessons. They started after she watched her two older brothers take lessons. "It looked like fun," she says, "so I wanted to try it."

Although her brothers have since quit, Alina practices six days a week for almost 30 hours, rotating among the balance beam, the uneven parallel bars and floor work.

High above her head, hanging from the ceiling, is a banner that reads "USA Gymnastics National Team Training Center," but Alina says she isn't sure if she'll ever make it to the Olympics. "If I do," she says, "then I'll know I'm really good." For now, though, she says she's just a little nervous about her next competition, her first at level 8.

Across the gym from Kelsey and Alina, is a group of approximately a dozen young boys ranging in age from 5 to 7.

The boys, in T-shirts and shorts instead of leotards, stretch and do back bends at the beginning of class.

One of their coaches, Larry Castle, says there are so few boys at WVG because it is primarily meant for training girls.

"We keep them until they're about 13. If they're any good, we send them off to another gym," Castle says.

The boys, however, don't seem to mind that they are outnumbered by girls. Six- year-old Matthew Sampson says that he likes to look at all the girls. "I like it because it makes you strong," Matthew says of the sport.

The boys are occupied practicing their splits on top of an orange-and-blue wedge-shaped mat. Others do push-ups while their coaches count.

Even under the gaze of their two coaches, the boys' eyes roam across the room, watching what goes on around the gym, whether it's Kelsey or Amy swinging through the air on the uneven parallel bars or Alina cartwheeling across the balance beam. Not all students at West Valley Gymnastics will make it to the Olympics, but the gym trains these kids to do a lot more than that.

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