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Strug gives gymnasts golden advice
More than 50 young gymnasts and their parents brushed with fame June 26 at Northern Virginia Gymnastics Academy (NVGA) in Sterling when Olympic gold medalist Kerri Strug dropped by for a six-hour visit.
The woman who belied two torn ligaments to clinch an inspiring victory for team and country in the 1996 Atlanta Games autographed posters, posed for photographs and gave a motivational talk to children whose only knowledge of Strug's feats have come to them through YouTube.
Gina Tostenson, mother to NVGA student Abby, 10, believes that Strug's presence can serve as an impetus to her daughter's development.
"She looks up to her," Tostenson remarked, noting that Abby has viewed online videos of Strug many times. "She knows from [Strug] that she can accomplish her goals if she sets them, no matter what."
Faith Comini, who with husband Mike has co-owned and coached at NVGA for 20 years, reflected on Strug's appearance from a coach's perspective.
"Having Kerri here is great motivation for the kids, but also for the coaches too. We can tell the kids, 'Suck it up, look what Kerri did,'" a smiling Comini said.
What Strug did was to brave a severely injured left knee in front of a packed Georgia Dome and an international audience to catapult herself over the vault and stick the landing with precision and pain, scoring 9.712 and winning gold for the United States.
How Strug got there was through years of torturous hours of hard work and sacrifice, trading in her childhood for a leotard and a dream.
In a breezy, hot gymnasium redolent of chalk and sweat, surroundings reminiscent of those in which the teenaged Strug relentlessly honed her craft, the 30-year-old former elementary school teacher and current Department of Justice employee spoke to the assemblage of attentive kids and rapt parents about "a few things I just want to share."
Strug shared her experiences as a pupil of respected gymnastics coach Béla Károlyi, about whom she told the children that "he may have looked nice, but he was tough!"
"You've got to find your Béla," she advised. "You've got to find someone who gets you to work harder, be a better person, every day."
Strug spoke of her years on a draconian diet, one in which she was restricted from the pizza the kids had just devoured. She related the importance of forming good habits -- if a person practices a certain way, she said, their mind and body will remember that way. She recommended that the kids focus only on what is within their control.
"When I was on that runway," she remembered, gesturing to the television which had just displayed her famous dramatics, "I wasn't thinking about my knee or the people or the gold medal or anything else. I was just thinking about the vault."
Strug retired from competitive gymnastics at age 20, later graduating from Stanford University with the desire to provide the framework and the encouragement for children to expand their capacities and realize their dreams.
Now working full-time with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which oversees grant distribution to non-profit organizations which benefit at-risk youth, she travels frequently to give motivational speeches.
"It's a win-win for me to come out and talk to the kids like this," she commented between autographs. "Not everybody is going to make the Olympics, or even get to the state level. But they need to have fun and put forth the effort to get the best out of themselves that they can."
Strug's athletic history abounds with tribulations, from a debilitating stomach injury to a severely pulled back muscle. She made a habit of rebounding, including her most celebrated rebound 12 summers ago.
"I had a goal and I wanted to attain it. In sports or in life you're gonna have setbacks, but it's those who get back up and try again that are ultimately successful," the two-time Olympian said. "It's critical not to have any regrets."
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