Full of gritty determination belying her 10 years, a middle-schooler from Tampa Palms is locked on target for Olympic gold in gymnastics.
By RODNEY THRASH
Published May 2, 2004
TAMPA PALMS - In the corner of a warehouse-sized gymnasium, a petite brunette in a red leotard stands atop a 4-inch-wide balance beam. Her arms are stretched above her head. Her feet are pointed at a 45-degree angle.
"Higher, Sarah," gymnastics coach Amy Schulthess yells as the girl dismounts. "Higher."
It is just before 8 p.m. on a recent Thursday. While some of Sarah Wolford's fifth-grade classmates at Tampa Palms Elementary School are finishing homework, scraping crumbs off their dinner plates or readying for bed, Wolford still has more than a half hour of tumbling, flipping and pirouetting to go. Not to mention the 45-minute commute home from this gymnastics studio in St. Petersburg.
And that's just fine by the preteen with Olympic gold on her mind.
She need only look at the banners that hang from the rafters of Tampa Bay Turners Gymnastics as motivation.
Scrawled in bold purple letters are the names of girls who endured the same training - training that catapulted them to the medal stand of the annual Florida State Gymnastics Championship and onto winning college teams such as Louisiana State University and the University of Georgia. On the walls are 11-by-14-inch color posters of top collegiate gymnastic programs.
"Always go for perfect," Schulthess shouts.
At 10 years old, Wolford is well on her way. She's a level 7 gymnast when most girls her age compete at levels 1, 2 or 3.
"She's more advanced than a normal gymnast her age," Schulthess said.
Her near-perfect performance at the state championships in March earned her a 9.375 out of 10 and an all-around silver medal. Her bedroom has become less of a resting place than a display case. As many as 100 medals, ribbons and trophies fill every nook and cranny.
But as Wolford has learned, being perfect requires discipline and sacrifice.
* * *
Barely two hours have passed since the 2:15 p.m. school bell rang and Wolford already has breezed through the day's homework.
Not that she has much of a choice.
With training at 5:30 p.m. and 35 miles separating Tampa Palms from St. Petersburg, "it's got to be like clockwork," Terry Wolford, Sarah Wolford's mom and chauffeur, said.
Homework has to be done. Dinner has to be made. And everyone must be ready to go by 4:15 p.m. Not a minute later.
"They get in a fit if we're late," Terry Wolford said.
Sure enough, Sarah Wolford and friends Erin Pluchino and Rhianna Davis get antsy as the 5 o'clock hour approaches. The questions start.
What time is it?
What time are we going to get there?
"She wouldn't care a bit if she was late to school," Terry Wolford said.
That's because school is, well, school. Gymnastics, on the other hand, "is really fun," she said. It builds her confidence in ways she never imagined. And competing takes her places she's never been.
Sarah Wolford is in this for the long haul She dreams of winning a full gymnastics scholarship to Louisiana State, the same school that gym owner Colleen Barger attended. But she doesn't want that to be her career peak. Her ultimate goal is to earn one of only seven spots on the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team and to medal in "everything."
"The whole family has made a huge adjustment to make this work," Terry Wolford said as she drove a black Mercedes station wagon across the Howard Frankland Bridge, Sarah and friends in tow. "For a child who puts 16 hours a week into something extra, you want them to have the best. At least that's what we decided."
Just how big of an adjustment are the Wolfords making?
Next school year, Terry Wolford will wear a new hat: middle school teacher.
Liberty Middle School, where Sarah Wolford will enter sixth grade next fall, does not end its day until 4 p.m. Figuring that would not be enough time to do homework, her parents have decided to homeschool Sarah Wolford for part of the day. Terry Wolford will teach her language arts and geography two hours prior to the school's 9:15 a.m. start. Sarah will spend the next three hours at Liberty and return home by noon.
She doesn't mind. She'd much rather be in a gym than a classroom, she said.
"School to Sarah is just a technicality you have to go through," Terry Wolford said.
"Her whole world is gymnastics."
* * *
The training is intense. A multicolored sign above the double glass doors leading to the gym has an advisory: Absolutely no parents in the gym.
Terry Wolford and hordes of other parents congregate in the building's lobby and peer through a Plexiglas window as their daughters perfect various acrobatic moves.
