`OW' FACTOR.

Byline: Chris Hansen The Register-Guard

CORVALLIS - Last weekend, in her last regular-season home meet, Oregon State gymnast Jami Lanz grimaced as she moved gingerly from event to event, walking as if she had a big rock in the back of her shoe.

Hobbled for the past month by a deep bruise in her right heel, Lanz has continued to perform and on Friday night, in the Salbasgeon Suites Invitational at Gill Coliseum, the freshman from Eugene had the meet of her life.

Lanz won the all-around competition with 39.525 points. It tied her for the third-best score in the Pac-10 Conference this season.

She was the top performer in the balance beam, scoring 9.90, and finished second in the floor exercise and vault with scores of 9.925 and 9.90, respectively. In the uneven bars, her score of 9.80 was the top one on the team.

All of her scores either set or tied her season best in each event and helped the 17th-ranked Beavers record a season-high 196.55 points to win the meet that also featured 18th-ranked Kentucky, Washington, Seattle Pacific and Boise State.

"Her performance tonight was spectacular," Oregon State head coach Tanya Chaplin said afterward. "She just keeps getting better and better."

And she appears to be peaking at just the right time.

The Beavers will host the conference championship meet Saturday at 6 p.m., and helping lead the way for Oregon State will be Lanz, a Churchill High School graduate who for years was a standout performer for the National Academy of Artistic Gymnastics club team in Springfield.

Lanz arrived at Oregon State an 18-time Oregon state champion, a 13-time Region II champion and three-time Junior Olympic participant, where she twice finished fourth in the vault (2003, 2005).

She holds the top scores this season for the Beavers in the vault, uneven bars, balance beam and all-around, and she has the second-best score in the floor exercise.

"This has been pretty awesome," Lanz said of her freshman season. "I would never have thought I would be this successful at all. I knew Tanya and (associate head coach Mike Chaplin) were amazing coaches and they'd help me do whatever I could, but they've brought me to a whole new level."

Chaplin was plenty familiar with her talent and potential when they offered Lanz one of only three available scholarships.

What has been a pleasant surprise to Chaplin, however, has been the toughness Lanz has displayed this season.

"She's (our) only athlete who has competed in every event in every competition," Chaplin said. "That's phenomenal as a freshman to be able to do that. It's been a very long time since I could look back and see anyone who has done that."

And she's done so in recent weeks fighting an injury so painful that Lanz doesn't put pressure on her heel when she doesn't have to. But when it comes time to perform, or stick a landing, Lanz has been able to ignore the pain.

"It's not a good feeling," Lanz said of her bruised heel, "but when you're competing you forget about everything that hurts. It's all fun, it's all about fighting through."

And being able to put on a good face while doing so.

"It's not a sport where you can just tape up, have a strange gait and get away with it," Chaplin said. "You have to pretend when you're out there that everything's great and go through your routine flawlessly even though you might be dying."

Lanz is hardly the first gymnast to be successful while competing with a painful injury. But it is significant that she is doing so as a freshman, Chaplin said.

"You definitely know that you can count on her no matter what and that come crunch time she'll be ready to go," Chaplin said. "You also don't second-guess her. You know she's giving you everything she possibly can. There's a trust level that builds between the athlete and the coaches over time and this helps that develop."

As for the Pac-10 Conference championships, Lanz will go in ranked 28th nationally and sixth in the conference in the all-around.

"I'll go in there with a lot more confidence in myself," Lanz said. "There's still things I need to work on, but once I go out there (this) weekend, I'll be more confident I can hit everything."

CAPTION(S):

Jami Lanz competes in the uneven bars in an invitational Friday at Gill Coliseum, where she won the all-around with a career-best 39.525 points. The freshman from Eugene has Oregon State's best scores this season in the vault, uneven bars, balance beam and all-around. Lanz is the sixth-ranked gymnast in the all-around in the Pac-10 heading into Saturday's conference championships. No. 17 Oregon State will host the meet.