Gymnastics

In gymnastics, it's usually the younger the better, and they came pretty young as students from eight Philadelphia elementary-school districts competed at the third annual Edwin R. Popper Open Invitational Gymnastics Meet last week. The tournament again proved a showcase for the gymnasts of the Morrison School in Olney, which was the host school for this year's competition. The Morrison team not only won the meet for the third time, but it extended a five-year unbeaten string. In fact, Morrison teams haven't lost an event in five years.

Gymnastics tickets are the toughest to obtain in Seoul, but good seats are still available for canoeing, rowing, field hockey and baseball on the third day of the Olympics. By the opening day of the Games on Saturday, the organizing committee said, only 752 of the 154,621 gymnastics tickets were unsold. Also popular are cycling, volleyball, track and field, table tennis, shooting and archery.

The day after Kerri Strug and the U.S women's Olympic gymnastics team won its gold medal, the telephones at Kindercise Gym started ringing. By the time the director of the gymnastics program arrived, she had 15 messages on her answering machine. That's more calls than Sonja Zalenfki typically receives in a month. "People are interested in signing their children up," she said. It has been same story at the Northeast YMCA, which offers three sessions of gymnastics camp.

Freshman Alicia Brandt of District 3's James Buchanan High won the PIAA individual advanced all-around state gymnastics championship yesterday at Shippensburg University, edging Marisa Dinatale of Central Dauphin on a tie- breaking procedure. Both finished with 36.85 points in the four events: vault, beam, bars and floor exercise. Officials add up all judges' scores in the tie-breaker, instead of the usual procedure of eliminating the highest and lowest scores given to a girl in an event.

Mark Eaton, a former NCAA gymnast who became a nationally known gymnastics coach, was killed when a small plane in which he was a passenger snagged an electrical wire and cartwheeled onto a freeway on-ramp in Winslow, Ariz. Eaton, an All-America in 1970-71, was 45. Pilot Davis M. Ellis, 55, also died in the crash Wednesday. Ellis had flown to Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, to help Eaton, who coached Ellis's 12-year-old daughter, repair a boat, authorities said. They were returning when they crashed.

They don't air Olympic boxing in prime time for a few reasons. They lose 75 percent of their female audience, NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol says. A history of too much scandal, too much cheating. It's seedy. It's brutal. It's a turn-off, the dirtiest word in television. The American public is turned on by gymnastics. Specifically, women's gymnastics. This, despite charges that, boiled down, the sport contains many of the same elements that disgust them about boxing. There is documented cheating in gymnastics in the form of growth-stunting hormones and biased judges.

The first thing you notice about high school gymnasts is the chalk. It is everywhere. On the calloused hands, coating the muscular shoulders, hanging in the air like a winter snowstorm. It is used to help the gymnasts get a better grip on the equipment, and it is being used less and less as gymnastics loses its grip at the area high school level. There aren't many high school gymnasts left in the area. West Chester East has the only boys' team in the Ches-Mont League; there are none in the Southern Chester County League.

Sara Wolchko had a dilemma three years ago. The Central Bucks West senior had been a gymnast for 10 years but was forced to give up the sport because of an elbow injury. So Wolchko set out to find a new sport that would blend her gymnastics background with her determination to succeed. She found a sport in diving, where Wolchko finds herself a favorite to win a state championship this season after placing second last year. She's been so successful that Iowa, Penn State, Michigan, Clemson and Maryland have shown interest in her diving in college, all extending invitations for visits.

Every now and then, a kid walks into a gymnasium and a star is born. It may sound like a movie script, but two years ago, gymnastics coach John Pancott saw it happen. In 1980, the Pancott Gymnastic Center opened in Malvern and though Pancott had an array of talent, his school was missing that one kid who had unlimited potential - the kind that a coach could turn into a future Olympian. In Pancott's 20 years as a coach, he had never worked with a boy or girl who had superstar ability.

Olympic medalist Mitch Gaylord may have four ribbons dangling with bronze, silver and gold, but as a screen hero the gymnast flubs his compulsories. Tears well up in his doe eyes, his nostrils flutter, his well-toned deltoids twitch in high tension. No, this isn't before a dramatic confrontation in American Anthem - this happens every time Gaylord opens his mouth. Who is this, Ralph Macchio after a Charles Atlas body-builder course? American Anthem, brought to you by Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli, is a thrilling gymnastic competition beggared by a who-cares melodrama.

Erin Gallagher tossed a complete-game shutout as St. Joseph's defeated Temple, 6-0, in the opening round of the Atlantic Ten championship softball tournament at Billiken Sports Center in St. Louis. Gallagher, a senior from St. Basil's Academy, has won 65 career games. The Owls (27-22) then were eliminated by a 4-1 loss to Charlotte. The 49ers had lost, 9-2, to George Washington in the morning games. St. Joe's, which entered the tourney as the sixth seed, will face second-seed Fordham at 4:30 p.m. Thursday.

In response to clinching the Eastern College Athletic Conference championship with the program's highest earned score - 347.400 on Friday at McGonigle Hall - the Temple men's gymnastics team has moved from 10th to No. 9 in the latest NCAA polls. The 7-1 Owls own an average score of 345.425 on the year. Oklahoma is ranked No. 1 and has the nation's highest earned score of 345.525.   Owls get new coach Temple head softball coach Joe DiPietro has announced the addition of Chrissy Focht to the coaching staff for the remainder of the 2012 season.

Temple's men's gymnastics scored a total 347.400 points to win the ECAC team championship at McGonigle Hall on Friday. The Owls, ranked No. 10 in the nation, advance to the NCAA championships, which will be held in Norman, Okla., on April 20-21. Temple was led by Chris Mooney, runner-up in all-around (88.300 points), and Adam Al-Rokh (Bensalem Christa McAuliffe Academy), fourth in all-around (83.000). Owls rally for naught. Trailing, 7-0, to Fordham, the visiting Temple baseball team racked up one run in the fifth inning and four runs in the sixth, but lost to the Rams, 8-5. La Salle falls.

Denise Dillon signed a multiyear contract to remain Drexel's women's basketball coach, the university announced on Wednesday. Exact terms were not disclosed. Dillon, who recently completed her ninth season as the Dragons' head coach, became Drexel's all-time leader in Division I wins this past season, with 150 career victories. The Broomall native took the Dragons to their only NCAA tournament appearance in 2009 and the team has made four straight postseason appearances.

Daniel B. Wong, 57, of Northeast Philadelphia, a physical education teacher and track and gymnastics coach, died of cancer Sunday, March 18, at Hahnemann University Hospital. For several years, Mr. Wong taught at Peirce Elementary School in Philadelphia before joining the staff of Morrison Elementary School in Olney in 1985. At Morrison, he coached gymnastics as an extracurricular activity and coached a track team that won races at the Penn Relays in 2003. He trained the team on his own time on weekends, said his wife, Sharon Luecke Wong.

NEWARK, Del. - In a small way, Haley Jones has contributed to a gymnastics lore that she hardly knew existed. The West Chester Henderson senior, a college-bound gymnast, was a mere toddler the last time her school fielded a gymnastics team. The Warriors were quite the powerhouse back then, capping a three-year PIAA championship streak in 1994. "I've seen pictures around my school, but I've never heard anything, really," Jones said about the team. Henderson's gymnastics success is 20th-century history.

She wobbled on the beam but didn't fall on the dismount. That and a super uneven-bars routine added up to a gold medal for American gymnast Bridgette Caquatto in the all-around competition Wednesday during the Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico. "The beam routine went pretty smoothly for me. I just had one major wobble," said the 17-year-old Caquatto, who became the seventh consecutive American to win the marquee gymnastics event at the games. "Besides that, I was very happy with how everything else went.

The NCAA says it found no major violations committed by Auburn regarding Cam Newton or other pay-for-play allegations. The NCAA released a statement Wednesday saying it has closed its 13-month investigation into Auburn's recruitment of the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, whose father shopped his services to another school for nearly $200,000. The NCAA also cleared Auburn in allegations by four former players that they received payments during their recruitment or careers.