Monday, Aug. 30, 2004 | 10:06 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Having just returned from Athens, Cassie Rice, the matriarch of Henderson Gymcats, spent the latter part of last week reattaching the telephone to her office wall.
As it does every four years following the Olympic gymnastics competition, the Gymcats' phone was ringing off the hook as parents across the valley were calling to inquire where they could sign up their little girl to become the next Carly Patterson.
For anybody who runs a gym that caters to the sport for which the building is named, it doesn't get any better than the aftermath of the Summer Games.
Yet you could detect a bit of melancholy in Rice's voice despite the fact that Gymcats still was closed for the Olympics, enabling her to spend some quality time with her two young daughters. Taylor Rice is starting to exhibit some of her mom's expertise in the sport, having earned the role as the acrobatic Thing One in the "Cat In The Hat" movie starring Mike Meyers.
But Rice admitted it was eerie not to see Tasha Schwikert, Thing One in her professional life and the closest thing she'll probably ever have to a third daughter or another kid sister, flipping around the place with them.
Elite gymnastics is the umbilical cord that has united Rice and Schwikert since the latter was 7. Schwikert is almost 20 now, and both she and Rice, her only coach, agree that their relationship has had its contentious moments.
Thursday wasn't one of them.
"Business is booming after the Olympics," Rice said. "The phone hasn't stopped ringing. I'm back in the gym and my kids are here."
But Schwikert wasn't, and Rice said that seemed as strange as an 85-degree day in August.
Upon returning from Athens, where she was relegated to the role of alternate for the silver-medal winning U.S. women's team, the most famous Gymcat of them all was back on the road, promoting the Rock-N-Roll Championship Gymnastics tour which begins this week.
It most likely will be her last appearance as an elite gymnast, as Schwikert will start classes at UCLA next month. She'll also compete in gymnastics at Westwood, but not at the cutthroat international level.
"It does seem strange," Rice said. "Tasha is out promoting the Rock-N-Roll Gymnastics tour. She's excited abut it. She's looking forward to the clinics (held in conjunction with the tour) so this is fun for her. This will be good for her."
It will good because Schwikert will be able to hear the cheers one more time. The only U.S. veteran from the Sydney Olympics who elected to put off her real life for four more years of physical torture -- er, training -- Schwikert was slowed by foot and leg injuries that knocked her from the top rung of U.S. women's gymnastics which she had occupied in both 2002 and 2003.
She was national all-around champion in both of those years. But they weren't Olympic years, which is almost like holing out a 3-iron shot when nobody's watching. Schwikert, like the water polo team from Sri Lanka, was quickly forgotten at Athens as Patterson went on to win all-around gold and others hogged the media spotlight she once occupied.
Still, Rice said for a brief moment it appeared that fate might finally smile instead of frown on her star pupil at Athens, as two of those on the five-person team, Courtney Kupets and Annia Hatch, aggravated injuries in training.
"Courtney had a hamstring and Annia hurt her foot ... but they didn't want to make a decision and pull them off the team at the last minute," Rice said of the U.S. coaches and the powerful delegation that pulls their strings.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, a whole lot of Atkins diets would be in trouble. However, Rice said had Schwikert been been chosen to compete in the floor exercise instead of the hobbled Kupets, perhaps she could have turned silver into gold.
"It could have been," Rice said when asked if the outcome might have been different had the U.S. substituted Schwikert into the floor exercise, her specialty event. "On the last day at selection camp, she had a 9.6."
A 9.6 at Athens would have given the U.S. team the extra tenths of a point it needed to overhaul the Romanians and capture the gold medal that was expected of it.
So while her teammates came up just a little short and Patterson went on to become America's new gymnastics sweetheart, Schwikert and Rice headed for the Acropolis, to put the souvenir cameras they were given by the U.S. Olympic Committee to good use.
In retrospect, Schwikert's fate at Athens was a tiny footnote in comparison to the primary gymnastics drama of these games, and I'm not talking about Svetlana Khorkina's record-setting performance in the fifth women's discipline that she created, which is pouting and posturing for the camera.
Rice said if there can possibly be an upside to the controversy that resulted in Wisconsin's Paul Hamm being awarded the men's all-around gold medal due to a judges' error -- and then being asked to give it back -- it's that the sport may now see fit to embark on the long overdue process of policing itself. Or have somebody else do it instead.
"It was hugely embarrassing for our sport," she said of Hamm and the egg on the face his situation caused both the International Gymnastics Federation as well as the one at home.
Depending on with whom you talk, USA Gymnastics either tried to distance itself from Hamm or did not support him in the proper manner once the brouhaha erupted. Those close to Hamm blame the lukewarm treatment on the fact that he also has elected to participate in the Rock-N-Rock tour, instead of the one it sponsors, the TJ Maxx Tour of Gymnastics Champions, that will visit the Thomas & Mack Center Nov. 13.
Naturally, USA Gymnastics disputed those charges, although Rice suggested the damage already has been done.
"Sometimes," she said, professing her love for gymnastics while at the same time condemning its ever present politics, "I wish we had the kind of sport where whoever touches the wall first wins.
"That would make it so much better."
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