STRUG'S PAIN IS NOT UNUSUAL.

Byline: Terry Pluto Akron Beacon Journal 

Kerri Strug had been there before - in pain.

It is a gymnast's constant companion.

So are loneliness, self-doubt and an overwhelming need to please parents and coaches.

But always, there is the pain.

In 1993, Strug strained abdominal muscles.

In 1994, she tore stomach muscles, and that is excruciating. It makes you feel as if you're being punched in the stomach every time you move, and Strug missed eight months of training.

In her first major meet back - she fell off the parallel bars and flat on her back. She was carried off on a stretcher. Her teammates feared she had fractured her back. It was ``just'' a sprain.

You hear that all the time, ``just a sprain.''

Even today, Strug's injury is being called ``just a sprain,'' when she actually tore a couple of ligaments in her left ankle.

Maybe you have a little girl who one day wants to wear a gold medal around her neck like Mary Lou Retton or Kerri Strug.

Then you need to know that at the age of 13, Strug left her home in Tucson, Ariz., to move to Houston, so she could train with famed coach Bela Karolyi. You need to know that this is how Olympic gymnasts are made, how they leave home as young as 10 and spend their formative years with someone else.

You need to understand that from the age of 13 until the Olympics, Strug moved five times so she could work with different coaches.

``When she was 12, Kerri won every meet,'' her mother, Melanie Strug, told reporters. ``That was when she told us, `I want to move away and make the Olympic team.' We were devastated. We thought that was ridiculous. She was our baby. But when your child is willing to make that sacrifice, it is hard to say no.''

Yes, it is hard.

But sometimes parents need to do just that - say no. They need to tell their children they can't go to Houston . . . they can't fly airplanes . . . they can't do things parents know are dangerous and wrong.

If you have a young girl, look at her. Or look at her picture. Or just recall your favorite image of her. Would you want her taken away and reared by strangers, say from the ages of 12 to 18? X X X

This question is asked by Joan Ryan, the fine sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of ``Little Girls in Pretty Boxes,'' which should be required reading for any parent or girl serious about gymnastics.

``I watched Kerri take that vault the other night and I thought it was a truly heroic moment,'' Ryan said. ``I wasn't bothered as much by that as by a lot of other things I've seen in gymnastics. She is 18. Her ankle injury was severe, but it was not like some girls who have gone out there with head, neck and back injuries. I just hope other girls, coaches and parents realize that this was the Olympics, and you don't try something like that in a small meet or practice.''

Ryan then listed Strug's battles with back, stomach and ankle problems.

``Even Kerri herself says she can't remember how many times she sprained that ankle,'' Ryan said. ``Who knows if it was even at 100 percent coming into the Olympics.''

Ryan, who is covering the Olympics, said it is common for most elite gymnasts to take ``6 to 7 Advils'' a day. A 1994 University of Utah study of these gymnasts revealed that 59 percent of them had some kind of eating disorder.

Look at the women on the U.S. team. The average age is almost 18, yet most of them appear 13. Strug is 4-foot-9 and 87 pounds at the age of 18.

``The question is if gymnastics attracts girls who look that way, or is there something in the training and diets of the gymnasts that keeps them from reaching puberty?'' Ryan said.

She says both forces are at work.

Lithe little girls with flexible limbs are to gymnastic coaches what 6-foot-4 lanky lefties are to baseball scouts.

But baseball wants their players to add strength, muscle and the right kind of weight. They want their players to physically mature as fast as possible. Basketball coaches are always after their players to add muscle and bulk.

Gymnastics is just the opposite. Gymnastics means trying to hold off age, and it often is a race against the clock. It is girls fearing they will be washed up by the time they leave high school.

That same University of Utah study of elite gymnasts discovered that the girls' mothers reached puberty at 12.9 years, their sisters at 13.4 years -- but the gymnasts didn't reach puberty until 15.5 years.

That's because, little and light is good in gymnastics. A girl who begins to look a little like a woman is a gymnast headed out the door, so she'll do anything to try to keep looking like a little girl. X X X

Ryan's book is filled with harrowing tales of girls taking laxatives, thyroid pills and diuretics to keep their weight down and stave off puberty. Bulimia and anorexia are common.

Remember, this is your little girl we are talking about.

Would you like to hear her wretching in the bathroom, just so she can keep her weight down? Would you like to see her eating just an apple for breakfast, a peach for lunch and a salad for dinner? Do you want her embarrassed and frightened of growing up?

Yes, many girls go through this stage - but for gymnasts, you can multiply all the fears and phobias by 100.

What makes Ryan's book powerful is that names are named. People are on the record. A star gymnast named Kristie Phillips said, ``I weighed only 98 pounds, and I was being called (by her coach) an overstuffed Christmas Turkey.''

Famed coach Bela Karolyi has called his girls such wonderful names as bloody imbeciles or fat cows.

``I am 36 years old now,'' Ryan said. ``If I had someone calling me fat, stupid and ugly every day, I'd start to believe it. You can imagine what an adolescent girl feels, and Bela calls them all that and more.''

According to Ryan, Karolyi puts his girls through a schedule of 46 hours per week in the gym - Sundays off. Three days off for Christmas and also the Fourth of July. The kids go to school via correspondences courses.

Sometimes, parents quit their jobs and move to Houston to set up a home near their child - and find jobs in that city. In other cases, gymnasts whose parents couldn't leave their hometown put their children in the homes of gymnasts who do live in Houston.

So you take a teen-age girl who doesn't even weigh 90 pounds. This girl is the kind of person who needs to excel and please people - common traits in gymnastics. Then you tell her to keep thin. You work her eight hours a day. She stays skinny, but messing with her body's chemistry will lead to some physical and emotional problems, especially in bone structure development.

No wonder there are so many injuries.

And no wonder the gyms of America are littered with the little bodies of kids who didn't make the Olympic team. X X X

What about Mary Lou Retton?

``She was a special person,'' Ryan said. ``She had a mental toughness that let the insults sort of roll off her back. She only went away from home for a year before the (1984) Olympics. She didn't have stage parents and she was 16 during the Olympics.''

Actually, that is how it should be.

Kids don't need to be away from home for five years before the Olympics.

Gymnastics medal shouldn't go to what Ryan calls ``the Pixies,'' emerging women who look like little girls.

There is so much good about gymnastics - the discipline, the exercise, the coordination and sheer beauty of the sport.

Retton is married, has a career and seemingly is content with herself. But she not only beat the odds to win gold medals, she did the same in her personal life.

Ryan said that U.S. Gymnastics is at least starting to discuss the injuries, eating disorders and tyrannical coaching methods. She is trying to be optimistic that things will get better.

``At first, I was pleased when the minimum age for the next Olympics (2000) was raised to 16,'' Ryan said. ``But one gymnastics official told me that he feared that all it would do was force the kids to work harder to stave off puberty - and that could lead to more health problems.''

Coaches also need to remember that these are kids, not machines. ``We are commodities,'' former Olympian Kelly Garrison told Ryan. ``We make their living.''

But most of all, the parents must take charge and keep in control.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Kerri Strug is carried by her coach, Bela Kar olyi, as she waves to the crowd on her way to receiving her gold medal.

(2) Experts are asking whether athletes like Kerri Strug are being pushed too hard by their coaches and parents.

Associated Press