Antolin Discovered the Correct Balance

Jeanette Antolin said she will not hold anything back when she competes for UCLA in the NCAA women’s gymnastics championships beginning today at Nebraska. That wouldn’t be her style.

From her difficult routines on the uneven bars to her love of makeup and clothes, the 21-year-old former U.S. Olympic team hopeful is comfortable being the center of attention.

“She’s got a fiery personality,” UCLA Coach Valorie Kondos Field said. “It rubs off on people.”

Antolin, a junior, has earned the spotlight as a top performer for the Bruins, who are going for their fourth national title. As a teenager, the Huntington Beach native was one of the country’s top gymnasts, a perennial national team member who made the U.S. team for the 1999 world championships.

It is hard to believe that her career was nearly over a year ago.

Her problem was a penchant for bouncing between bars away from the gymnasium. Antolin took part in one of the notable college pastimes -- drinking.

On her own for the first time, she charged head-first into the night scene. Drinking and partying became a potent match to her outgoing personality.

“I didn’t drink every day,” she said. “When I did, I did it to the fullest. It started on Friday and Saturday and then it went to other nights as well.”

As a result, Antolin let herself get out of shape. She also was missing classes at an alarming rate and her grades consequently suffered. Soon, she soured on the sport.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time, she was not a happy person in the gym,” Kondos Field said.

Said Antolin: “I didn’t care how people saw me. I didn’t care about my gymnastics.”

Having seen and heard enough, Kondos Field, kicked Antolin off UCLA’s team at the start of the 2001 fall quarter.

The move stunned the gymnast and she thought her coach was joking. “Finally, it clicked in my head that she was serious,” Antolin said. “I just didn’t know what to think.”

Kondos Field calls sending Antolin away the toughest decision in her 13 years leading the program.

“It was a tough decision I had to make especially when she came to me, sobbing and pleading,” she said. “I wanted Jeanette to understand that it’s not my decision. I was simply the enforcer of that decision. The actions she made, that was the decision.”

Shocked and angered, Antolin turned to her family and Don Peters, her coach at SCATS Gymnastics in Huntington Beach. They, in turn, gave her some straightforward advice.

“I just told her that she’s blowing the greatest opportunity that she could have,” Peters said. “You’re in a place where four out of every five qualified applicants gets turned down.

“With kids like Jeanette, who have gone through a long period of intense, focused training in their younger years, when they go into college, it’s their first bit of freedom. A lot of time they’ll go through that wild stage.”

For Antolin, it was a wake-up call, and she rededicated herself. Antolin curbed her drinking, improved her grades, and on her own, went to the team’s practice facility inside Wooden Center and worked her way back into shape. Some of her teammates eventually found out what she was doing.

“She came in and worked [hard],” said junior Jamie Dantzscher, Antolin’s longtime friend. “That kind of dedication and motivation was what we needed. We felt she deserved her spot on the team.”

Said senior Onnie Willis: “I don’t think she wanted to end her career in that way.”

It was Dantzscher who went to her teammates and convinced them of Antolin’s renewed dedication, before going to Kondos Field. Hesitant at first, the coach realized it wasn’t a token suggestion.

“Her teammates put their reputation on the line by backing her,” Kondos Field said. “That had a lot of weight with me.”

Antolin was reinstated on Feb. 13 of last year and at the NCAA meet she scored 9.825 on the bars and 9.85 in the vault to help the Bruins finish third.

This season has recalled some of the success of her younger days. Antolin has recorded her first three perfect scores on the vault and will enter Saturday’s individual event finals as the favorite. She is expected to compete in every event tonight for the Pacific-10 Conference champion Bruins.

“I’m just glad to be contributing to the team as much as I am,” she said. “I’m really thankful that they could still believe in me.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

NCAA Women’sChampionships

*--* At Lincoln, Neb * Today: Team preliminaries, individual all-around competition and individual event preliminaries. Two sessions: 11 a.m. and 5 p.m * Friday: Super Six team finals, 5 p.m * Saturday: Individual event finals, 5 p.m * Teams competing: UCLA, Arizona State, Iowa, Louisiana State. Alabama, Michigan, Georgia, Utah, Nebraska, Auburn, Florida, Stanford. Note: Top three teams from each of today’s sessions advance to Friday’s finals All times PDT

*--*