Taking A Break

  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.