The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 26

SECTION Mivui'Dr iYi rn vvi i at xri i IV i DKS MOI MIS SIMM RFCIST! I BRIMRV 26. 1978 Ca v. 1 mhmmhI fc ii I'll ir 33 i Q5 Ui 'p 7r 1 4r I p4 Coach Jack Bond gives Megan McCunniff, 15, advice Megan leans on a pommel horse while catching her breath during a break at a three-hour as she takes time out at at recent gymnastic practice, session. The Cedar Falls gymnast chalks up between 30 and 35 hours of practice every week. In pursuit of perfection at 15 She first has to qualify for the joint Iowa-Nebraska state meet.

That will be Mar. 18 in Lincoln. Then there is regional competition in April, followed by sectional competition. In She's been at this sort of thing since she was 3. "We enrolled her in acrobatics then," her mother says.

"I knew she was a natural because she was all over the furniture at home." At 6, Megan started gymnastics. "There were several other girls in those early classes at the Waterloo YWCA who showed promise, too," Sonia says. "We used to call them the little By MARY KAY SHANLEY Rtfjttttr Staff Writer WATERLOO, IA. Megan McCunniff turns and twists and snaps around the bars as though she were made of rubber. She places demands on her body that most people wouldn't even dream of.

Her grueling workouts go on for hours 30 or 35 hours each week after school and on weekends. But like any determined effort, her work pays off. She to the best girl gymnast her age in Iowa perhaps the best of any age, although whether that is true may never be known. Megan, daughter of Monte and Sonia McCunniff of Cedar Falls, was the state champ in the United States Gymnastics Federation (USGF) junior division competition the last two years. This year, as a 15-year-old, she to In the senior division.

Her best opponent is 11-year-old Bonnie Gagnier of Ames, the defending senior division and Iowa high school champion. But Gagnier has given up USGF events and Megan does not compete Only two left ly he knows they're possible," mother Sonia says. The goal of the new tricks and all the work, beyond the senior national competition, is the Elite National level, 80 to 100 gymnasts who must constantly maintain a certain score in their performances. Being in the Elite is a prelude to the ultimate competition, the 1980 Olympic Games. Deliberate, determined Megan takes one step at a time and doesn't spend much time thinking about the Olympics.

"If I'd been at 12 where I am today, I might stand a better chance of getting there," she says. Bond explains: "As the sport is developing in the United States, younger children are doing more things with greater skill and at higher levels than ever. We know more about emotions, school activities and parent involvement than we did before. And all those affect a performance." Just the same, in April. Megan will go to Chicago for the Elite tryouts.

Gymnasts who make it are the ones who compete against foreign teams, and they are the ones who are eligible to try out for the eight berths oa the Olympic team. Her mother mentions, with a proud twinkle in ber eyes, that at the St Paul Winter Carnival Invitational recently, Megin tied for first place The gymnast she tied with was the only other one there who to going to the Elite tryouts. So it's back to the bars and the beam and the vaolt and the mat for Megan. The goal is perfection. It is a job that is never finished.

the end, 20 gymnasts from the western half of the U. S. and 20 from the eastern half will compete in i senior national competition. For Megan, that is a long way off. Meanwhile the work goes on.

Coach Bond decides what tricks (tumbling moves and stunts) Megan should do on the floor, beam, bar and vault "I make up my own dance on the beam and I have a dance instructor, Lynda Carr from Waterloo, who helps me with the floor work," Megan says. They mold, change, rehash and rehearse. Bond thinks Megan has what it takes to be great "She to able to work intensely by herself," he says, "and she has the ability to work on the little things, like where her toes should point or bow she should turn. She's very cautious and thinks things through first" when she starts a new routine. Two yoart behind New routine? How can there by anything left to learn? "Oh, there's always a new trick," Megan says with a bright smile.

Tm about two years behind on new tricks." Some are standard moves Megan just kasnt tackled yet, others are tricks that Bond makes Bp for her. "He's started her on things that we've never seen done, but technical The "little girls" got bigger and so much better that five years ago the Black Hawk Club was formed to accommodate talent like theirs. It's a private corporation started by 21 families and it's run by Coach Jack Bond. Of the little girls who grew up, only two still participate. It was junior high that did it "I didn't see all that many things in junior high that made me want to quit gymnastics that bad," says Megan, but most of the others did.

"The girls who quit were forgetting the neat things we did, like traveling." So Megan kept working out, two or three nights a week at first, on her high-level, advanced and Olympic routines, the ones that helped her to place 52nd out of i 40 in Eugene, in 1(7 and 43rd out of ISO In Houston, Tex, at the USGA's national competition in 1177. Megan was the only Iowan in the junior competition. She's aiming for the nationals again, only this time in the senior division. But Megan McCnmuff hi not one to assume a victory in advance. for Cedar Falls High ScnooL A head-on meeting between them to unlikely.

So Megan competes against herself. She arges her 4-foot 11-inch, 100-pound body toward perfection In perhaps the most physically demanding sport of all, a sport tnat requires strength and endurance as well as grace and agility. She works out at the Black Hawk Gymnastics Club Inc. la Waterloo almost daily. Sometimes her after-school bending, flipping and turning lasts bo til II o'clock wbea she goes home for supper.

Megaa's strongest eet ibis vear. The the balance beam where she has bee scoring yowrg gymnast has been at it since she was 6. 1.