Tuesday, June 22, 2004 | 9 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
It wasn't long ago that Tasha Schwikert, Las Vegas' gym dandy who will be attempting to take the next step toward qualifying for her second Olympics at this week's U.S. Team Trials at the Arrowhead Pond at Anaheim, thought her stiffest competition might come from within her own family.
Two years ago Jordan Schwikert, Tasha's kid sister, appeared on the verge of joining her sibling at the sport's highest level. But that was before injuries, which in gymnastics are more common than biased judging from former Communist bloc countries, reared their ugly head.
On the very day in 2002 that Tasha Schwikert won her second consecutive U.S. championship, Jordan Schwikert was forced to withdraw from the event in Cleveland with a back injury. It proved to be the beginning of the end of Jordan's career as an elite gymnast.
Foot and ankle injuries also have knocked Tasha Schwikert from the top rung of American gymnastics, to where she now is considered a dark horse to make the team for Athens. But at least she still has a chance, which, sadly, her sister won't be getting.
"She'd be in the Olympics," said Cassie Rice, who coaches the Schwikerts at Henderson Gymcats, when asked how far Jordan might have gone.
Rice said even more unfortunate than the initial injury to Jordan Schwikert was that she was told it had healed and was cleared to compete.
"We had a little issue with doctors," Rice said. "She was told that she was healthy and to go ahead, but there was a stress fracture. So then we wound up working out on it and making it a bilateral fracture. She needed surgery on it, so it was really bad."
Once the physical pain subsided, the younger Schwikert also had to deal with the fact that she would not be following in her sister's Olympic footsteps. Rice said she has handled that part of it with the dexterity she shows in training.
"It was a bad break, but her (mental) toughness made it easier to overcome," Rice said. "It would have helped Tasha, too, just to have somebody else up there to (push her).
"She's back in training now, but it's not quite the same," Rice added of Jordan Schwikert, who will join her sister at UCLA in the fall, where they will be teammates. "Elite and college are quite different. But she's going to be a great college athlete and will really help UCLA a lot."
Tasha Schwikert said she and Jordan don't spend a lot of time cursing fate.
"I try not to think what might have happened," she said. "You know, woulda, coulda, shoulda. I'm just excited that her and I are going to go to college together."
Around the horn
This weekend, Hunkie Cooper will finally have a chance to get even with Chuck Reed for leaving his dirty socks in the middle of the floor. And Reed will have the opportunity to get back at Cooper for barging in when he (Reed) had "company." The former UNLV football teammates and roommates will be on opposite sides of the line of scrimmage when Cooper's Arizona Rattlers square off against Reed's San Jose SaberCats in ArenaBowl XVIII Sunday at America West Arena in Phoenix. "We've been battling since junior college," said Reed, whose Tyler (Texas) team lost to Cooper and Navarro (Texas) J.C. in the 1989 junior college national championship game. "He would put his championship game ring on the dresser to mess with me." ... Kudos to UNLV for extending its football series against the Fighting Bratwurst (Wisconsin) but I'm not so sure that playing its own private Idaho is a good idea. The Vandals smashed the Rebels' windows and painted graffiti on their backsides here in 1994 (Idaho won 48-38) and have one of those programs that gets little respect but traditionally can teach you the meaning of it. ... Anybody who doesn't understand why Division I Lite (the nonpower conferences) wants a slice of BCS pie should put this in Beano Cook's pipe and smoke it: The six BCS conferences (SEC, ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10) and Notre Dame, which didn't even go to a bowl game, took home $163,486,628 in bowl game payouts this year while the Mountain West and the other Pop Warner conferences received just $17,558,518. ... Embattled coach Sven-Goran Eriksoon wasn't the only one to rejoice as England rallied to defeat Croatia 4-2 and move on to the quarterfinals of the Euro 2004 soccer championship. I heard the Crown and Anchor Pub on East Tropicana had run out of Guinness by the 65th minute Monday. According toa Bloomberg News report, British soccer fans are expected to consume another 12 million pints of beer, now that their side has made it through to the next round. ... UNLV had a decent baseball season, but the fact the Rebels led their conference in major league draft selections (7) only confirms that the Mountain West is no Big West (its former home) when it comes to college baseball. ... Brad Thompson, the local kid who set a minor league record with 57 consecutive scoreless innings pitched at Double-A Tennessee earlier this year, has been promoted to Triple-A Memphis and is 1-0 in two starts with a 2.61 ERA for the Cardinals' top farm club. ... Finally, does anybody really know that the 51s have fallen into last place in the PCL's Southern Division. Does anybody really care?
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