SEATTLE — Nikki Waiss and Kristen Linton have paid a price to be members of the University of Washington women’s gymnastics team.
You might say it’s a price they’ve paid in full.
Waiss, a fifth-year senior from Mill Creek, has a medical history like a luckless football player. At age 20, she’s already had four knee surgeries, one ankle surgery, one back surgery and, she said, “I’ve broken a million bones.” All due to gymnastics injuries.
Linton, meanwhile, is an 18-year-old freshman from Edmonds. No operations yet, but she’s sacrificed plenty with her time. Throughout high school, while her friends were doing typical teenager stuff, she was training roughly 22 hours a week during the school year, some 25 hours a week in the summer.
Such is the cost of success in a world of balance beams and uneven bars.
Collegiate gymnasts “have had to give up an awful lot for most of their lives to get to the level they’re at,” said UW second-year head coach Joanne Bowers. “And most of them don’t care because they’re so passionate about gymnastics. This is what they love and this is what they want to do.”
Waiss, a 2003 graduate of Jackson High School, admits she’s been through a lot, “but it’s all been worth it. I’ve struggled with injuries most of my life, but I don’t let that get in the way because I love gymnastics. I can’t imagine it not being a part of my life somehow,” she said.
And the payoff for all the many hours of practice, for all the bruises and other pains, comes in those moments of actual competition.
“Performing is my favorite part,” said Linton, a 2007 Meadowdale High School graduate. “I just like to show everyone what I can do and what I’ve been working for.”
Both Waiss and Linton started in ballet as small girls, but each then decided gymnastics was a better activity.
“I don’t know if you can fail a ballet recital,” Waiss said with a laugh, “but I came as close to failing as you can possibly get. So my mom put me in gymnastics, which was the next closest thing to ballet, and I just loved it right off the bat.”
Similarly, Linton remembers “needing something a little more energetic (than ballet), so my mom put me in gymnastics and I really enjoyed it.”
And now, all these years later, they are competing at the highest collegiate level of their sport. Waiss, who specializes in vault and bars, “is an incredible talent,” Bowers said. “She’s had lots of injuries, but she’s overcome a bunch to really be a great senior leader for us.”
Linton, who is an all-around (vault, bars, beam and floor exercise) competitor, came to Washington as a walk-on, but then showed enough potential to receive a full scholarship. “She’s doing a fantastic job for us,” Bowers said. “On bars and beam, she’s one of our top kids. She’s an incredibly hard worker, and she’s beautiful to watch.”
Bowers is just the third Washington gymnastics coach in the past 28 years, and her task is to revive a once-outstanding program that has slipped in recent seasons. The Huskies compete in the Pacific-10 Conference, although just seven schools — Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA, Stanford, California, Oregon State and the UW — have teams.
UCLA is the Pac-10’s perennial power, with the Bruins having won six of the past nine league titles and four national championships in the same span. Bowers, though, appears to have the Huskies headed in the right direction — she was the 2007 Pac-10 coach of the year — led by junior Ashley Houghting of Welland, Ont., who was the vault champion at last year’s conference meet.
Bowers recruits wherever she can find outstanding talent, and often that is right in the greater Seattle area. There are several top gymnastics clubs along the I-5 corridor, among them Everett’s Leading Edge Gymnastics Academy, which produced UW recruit Ruby Engreitz of Kirkland, a senior at Inglemoor High School who signed with Washington in November.
A typical recruit, said Bowers, is someone who “probably started gymnastics as a pre-schooler, though every once in a while you’ll see a kid that started a little bit later. Maybe 8 or 9.”
Generally, she added, they have “that perfectionist attitude. They’re very driven, very organized time-wise, and very good academically. And I think that’s part of their personality because they want to be great at everything they do. It’s about always getting better. Because it doesn’t matter what score you got, you can always get better.
“I am,” she said, “excited about the direction of the program, I really am. We’re working very hard in recruiting right now, and we’re trying to get some girls who are willing to be a part of a change here and they want to help us get there.”
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