THE WRITING ON (AND OFF) THE WALL THE AGE OF INNOCENCE NOT COMPLETELY ON ICE.

When she springs onto the ice to join the other figure skaters for warmups before a competition, Beatrisa Liang usually gets lost in the crowd.

No wonder. At 4-foot-8 and 72 pounds, she looks like ``a midget among giants,'' says her mother, Alice, trying to repress a laugh.

Bebe, as she's called, is 13 years old. Some of the other moms might suspect she's closer to 10 or 11.

So is there some cheating going on? Jeez, there's that funny age thing again. Long before Danny Almonte became the poster kid for Little League parents pretending that 14-year-olds are really 12, it's a question of ethics that never seems to escape youth sports.

Funny thing is, if Alice Liang really had any reason to even consider doctoring her daughter's birth certificate, it would be to make Bebe suddenly become older, not younger.

Bebe Liang, a Granada Hills skater who started the eighth grade at Faith Baptist School this week, finished sixth overall at the U.S. Nationals last January in Boston. That should make her a possible contender for the next U.S. Championships, which take place this January at Staples Center.

The top finishers of that competition represent the U.S. a month later at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

But for the Liang family, as well as her coach, former Olympian Tiffany Chin, that scenario isn't even on their radar.

International skating rules require anyone going to the 2002 Games to have turned 15 years old by July 1 of this year. Bebe Liang won't hit 14 until a month after Salt Lake City's festival. The age requirement has been on the books since 1996.

Chin, who has been Liang's coach since she was 6, admits to not knowing much about whatever was behind the age rule. But no matter what ability a prodigy of hers might have, she'd never advise any parent to circumvent anything.

``Isn't that a question of character?'' Chin asks, unlacing her skates following a recent early-morning lesson with Bebe at the Easy Street Arena in Simi Valley, where the two get together six times a week, sometimes twice a day.

Chin knows the answer to that rhetorical question. So does Alice Liang.

``I can't imagine doing that because one of the important lessons about sports is playing by the rules,'' Alice says. ``There's sportsmanship. Regardless of what rule it is, if you break it, you destroy the spirit of the sport.

``Even if you win, I don't know you can live with yourself. You cheat yourself. We're not helping develop a good skater, we're making a good person.''

Without any hesitation in the calculation, Bebe knows she'll be 17 if and when she's ready for the 2006 Games, and all that's fine with her.

Today, Bebe is at the start of the competitive skating season, one that'll take her to Nagano in two months leading up to the Nationals. Even though Chin says Bebe has far more perseverance as a skater than she had at 13, there's plenty of things on which to work. The entire package matters, not just triple Lutzes. And that takes time.

Plus, Bebe's also pretty good on the piano. Who's to say someday she doesn't take to that instead and put the skating aside.

That's the beauty of youth, watching kids develop interests, drop others, try new things. Altering that with a jar of liquid White-Out ruins that experience for everyone.

``It's been a rule for a few years,'' Bebe says of the skating-age regulation, ``so it really doesn't matter.''

Got that, mom and dad?

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Photo:

Skater Beatrisa Liang is a rising star at age 13. It's her real age and everything.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer