Only 20, Sacramone solidifies U.S. gymnastics team

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Alicia Sacramone is the grizzled veteran of the U.S. women's gymnastics team, the voice of experience, the team leader."She's really like our mom," says teammate Bridget Sloan. "When our real moms aren't there, Alicia's my mom."Sacramone is all of 20 years old.Still, compared to the 16-year-olds around her, that does make Sacramone the old hand at high-level gymnastics and everything that comes with it. Surrounded by girls still anticipating their high-school prom, she's an actual college student -- at Brown University, although she's taking a year off because of this little Olympics thing coming up in China. And she and Chelsea Memmel, who turned 20 in June, are the only Olympians who have both left their teens behind and have been competing internationally for six years or more.Sacramone did not earn her spot on the Olympic team until the July 19 mini-camp held by coach Martha Karolyi at the Karolyi ranch near Houston, but her experience -- and the personality that earned her the title of team captain at the 2007 World Championships -- had made her selection a virtual certainty throughout the complicated selection process.What, you might wonder, does the captaincy of a gymnastics team entail?"Well, it has the good, the bad and the ugly, I guess," Sacramone says, laughing."I deal with all kinds of problems. I'm mostly just there as a strong backbone for the girls. ... They know they can come to me and confide in me, and they can come to me if they ever need anything."I just try to pull them together if there's ever a hard time we're having at practices, just let them know what we're doing because we've been doing this for so long, and try to keep them motivated and keep their spirits up."It's not just in practice she'll take that step. At the 2007 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, the U.S. team struggled in its next-to-last event, the balance beam and fell out of first place. Sacramone pulled the team together for a pep talk -- "I just told them we could do it," she said later -- and Shayla Worley, Shawn Johnson and Sacramone delivered in final event, floor exercise, to win the gold medal."It's definitely important for us to have that person that's kind of the glue," says Samantha Peszek. "Each one of us has a different aspect that we bring to the team, and her personality is that she's outgoing and outspoken. She is the oldest, so it kind of fell into her lap, so to speak. And it's great. She's done a great job."Of course, on a team with the history and expectations of the U.S. women, you can't lead without some success on your resume, and Sacramone has that. The resident of Winchester, Mass., has seven career world championship medals, including individual awards in floor exercise (gold, 2005) and vault (silver in 2006, bronze in 2005 and 2007).So, when she talks, it's easier for her young teammates to listen."She's like a den mother," says Sloan. "She does so great, and she keeps us all in line. Like when we were at Worlds, we had a roll call. We all had a number."She just keeps us in line and keeps us going."Sacramone says the team is tight now, but that has not always been the case."When I started, the team wasn't very united, and we had little cliques and bonds," she recalled. But she credits the current training system for the national team, which brings together team members from their far-flung individual training for monthly camps at the 2,000-acre Karolyi ranch, for bringing about a change."It's really brought the coaches, the athletes, the national staff all together," Sacramone says. "And we're now all working for the same goal, which has made it 10 times easier for all of us to get there."(David Lassen writes for the Ventura County Star in California)