A TUMBLING SPORT : Gymnastics in the City Section Appears Headed for Extinction Despite the Heartfelt Efforts of Monroe Coach Les Sasvary

Gymnastics at the high school level in Los Angeles and many other parts of the nation is going the way of the dinosaur. The sport is briefly pumped back to life every four years when the Olympians come tumbling into America’s living rooms between TV commercials, but as soon as the Games end, so does the interest.

There are 49 high schools in the Los Angeles City Section, for example, but only six will organize gymnastics teams this season, which begins March 9.

And Les Sasvary of Monroe High, who has tried harder and accomplished more for high school gymnastics than anyone else in Los Angeles for more than two decades, is fighting the urge to slam someone’s head against a pommel horse as he watches the slow death of the sport that has been his life.

“I’m convinced we’ve reached the end of the gymnastics era in the L. A. schools,” he said. “It’s very disappointing. There has been nothing done to save the sport. I’m afraid there will be no more program at all next year. We’re down to six schools now, and if a couple more drop it, then it’s all over. It makes me angry.”

The anger comes because Sasvary has lived and breathed gymnastics since the age of 13, when he was a boy in Eger, Hungary, a town 100 miles northeast of Budapest. His love for the sport carried him to a university in Budapest, where he learned the sport from some of the world’s best teachers. It also brought him the honor of being the youngest member of the 1956 Hungarian Olympic gymnastics team.

But it also led to great disappointment when, under the threat of a national revolt against hard-liners in the country’s ruling Communist Party, the gymnastics squad was pared to two members and Sasvary was left home.

Months later, when Hungary did rise up in protest--one quickly and violently squashed after the government called in the Soviet army--the pull of gymnastics brought Sasvary across the Austrian border and eventually to the United States.

“I wanted to be in the Olympics and I thought I could maybe make it in the United States,” he said.

He never did. After finishing 11th in the national championships, which helped determine the Olympic team in 1960, Sasvary turned to coaching. He moved with his wife from Ohio to Los Angeles and got a job teaching at Wilson High. Four years later he was transferred to Monroe and began putting a gymnastics program together. He also started the school’s soccer program in 1978 and now coaches two high school teams.

In 21 years at Monroe, Sasvary’s gymnastics teams have won 10 City championships. Sasvary has produced individual champions as well, including Steve Malis, who became a Pacific-10 Conference standout for USC; Phil Gonzalez, a former All-American at the University of New Mexico; and David Mariel, who has had a brilliant career at UCLA. Under Sasvary’s direction, Mariel became the only gymnast in City history to win all seven events in the individual championships.

But now, the glory days seem to be fading.

“The old-timers have gone and the new ones don’t have the knowledge or the desire for the sport,” said Sasvary, 55. “And then there’s the liability factor, the chance of injury in this sport. If not taught properly, it can be such a dangerous sport. Administrators are pretty anxious to get rid of it.”

Hal Harkness, commissioner of the City Section, said that administrators do not want to end gymnastics. But he did agree with Sasvary that the sport in the City schools may be on its way out.

“It is absolutely not true that administrators are trying to get rid of gymnastics because of any liability problems,” Harkness said. “From my perspective, there has been absolutely no pressure, overt or covert, regarding decisions on gymnastics and liability. That is simply not a consideration.

“The problem is coaching. We are just not getting people with the background or people willing to get the background. It’s an extremely technical sport and you don’t just walk out and coach it. And as the number of teams decline, then the number of people who compete and form gymnastics backgrounds diminishes. It’s a bad cycle.”

A cycle that Harkness said has left the sport in a precarious position.

“Nearly all of our remaining gymnastics coaches are veteran people, closer to retirement than the start of their careers,” he said. “There is a real danger in the next few years of having no coaches and, thus, no gymnastics program at all.

“If the program is terminated, it will be because of insufficient interest and the number of coaches, not because of any decision by the City Section. When it becomes impractical--and we are very close to that now--then it will go. We want to do everything to keep it going, but we’re right on the edge now. With only six teams, any additional attrition and we just can’t have a league anymore. Then, gymnastics will be gone.”

And so will the area’s most accomplished gymnastics coach.

Sasvary’s success long has been noted by national officials. He was selected as a judge for the 1972 Olympics in Munich and judged the finest gymnasts in the world again at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. In 1978, he was elected vice president of the U.S. Gymnastics Federation and oversaw the national gymnastics program for five years while he continued coaching at Monroe.

Often, the lure of a bigger arena for his talents tugged at him. But always, he resisted. The problem, he said, was a simple one. His position as teacher and coach at Monroe paid more than most college gymnastics jobs.

“I’ve had several chances to coach at universities, but the problem was always money,” he said. “Universities, particularly those in the California system, kept offering me jobs with a 10% pay cut from what I was making. That was not possible. I have a family.

“I once aspired to that, but I don’t think I’d consider it anymore. I will retire in five years. My chances were there, but now I think I’ll finish up here.”

Sasvary said that the reason for his success as a coach was always obvious to him: He knows the sport more intimately than most coaches.

“The background is very important,” he said. “I was a competitor and made it to the Hungarian Olympic team. And also, there was the education in the sport. I went to the university of Budapest for gymnastics and studied with the best teachers in a place where gymnastics was the major sport. My background and education in Hungary always gave me a big advantage over coaches in the United States.”

Initially, Sasvary said, he was shocked to see the lack of interest in gymnastics in the United States. But gradually, he said, he was able to find a few youngsters who didn’t think of the sport as tumbling.

“There are not as many of them as there are in Hungary and most other European nations, but always there were a few who were willing to work, willing to make the sacrifices this sport demands. I set my standards very high as a coach, and I found kids who wanted to make the sacrifices. I didn’t get every kid interested in gymnastics, but the ones I got I knew were serious about it.”

No one has been more serious about it than the intense Sasvary. But as a lifetime of gymnastics starts to wind down, the fatigue from more than 20 years of battling apathy toward the sport sometimes shows.

“Sometimes now I think that maybe I’ve had enough. Sometimes it can get tiring,” he said. “I still enjoy being with the kids and seeing their progress. And I still like to win. Winning is not everything, but it’s almost everything. That has always been a big motivator for me.

“I enjoy winning.”