Gymnastics Team Flips Over Its Newest Talent

The Cal State Fullerton women’s gymnastics team is going to get a quick transfusion of talent before opening the season in January.

“It’s like a great early Christmas present,” Titan Coach Lynn Rogers said.

Rogers and associate head coach Julie Knight have been hoping that everything would work out for Tammy De la Cruz, one of the top gymnasts in the Philippines, to enroll at Fullerton and be eligible for this season.

And it has.

“We’re delighted,” Rogers said. “It’s been a five-month process since we first met her. We stumbled on her totally by accident, but everything fell into place.”

The Philippine national team trained for several weeks in Huntington Beach last summer, and Rogers and Knight were there to watch. By the time that training session ended, De la Cruz was well on her way to enrolling at Fullerton.

“We were just talking to their coach, and one question led to another,” Rogers said. “The next thing we knew Tammy was saying that she would be interested in coming here to school. We think she’ll be a great addition to the program.”

De la Cruz was eighth in the all-around in the Southeast Asian Games in October. She also finished third on the uneven bars and fourth on the balance beam.

“She’s really good,” Rogers said. “I’m not saying she’s on the level with the Russians, the Romanians or the Chinese, but she’s just a level below that.”

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Rogers says De la Cruz’s ability is comparable to the Titans’ Katy Maty, who won the Big West all-around championship last season as a sophomore.

“Her routines probably have a higher level of difficulty than Katy’s did when she came here two years ago,” Rogers said. “But she’s not as smooth as Katy was. But Katy also had been competing at the international level, and that helped her too. With Tammy, our main concern will be getting her routines more smooth, and helping build her confidence.

“But any time you can have a couple of kids in your program who have had that kind of international competition, it helps build confidence with everyone on your team.”

De la Cruz will join the team at a time when the Titans welcome added strength in the all-around. Maty has been bothered by back problems in the preseason and might not be at full strength when the Titans open their season Jan. 10 against Denver.

Rogers believes the beam and the bars are De la Cruz’s best events, but she also is strong on the vault. She is able to do the Yurchenko-style vault, a technique named after the outstanding Russian gymnast of the early 1980s.

In that vault, the gymnast approaches with a backward takeoff onto the pommel horse.

“Until this year, it wasn’t allowed in NCAA competition,” Rogers said. “The NCAA had been concerned about the risk factor. But they’ve apparently become satisfied with allowing it. It does makes an exciting vault. That kind of blind takeoff allows you to fly more, and the vault looks a lot bigger. Tammy does it well.”

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De la Cruz, 21, is 5 feet 1 and 96 pounds. “Her size makes her look a lot younger than she really is,” Rogers said.

Knight says De la Cruz was on the verge of retiring. “They have no college gymnastics in the Philippines, so this became a great opportunity for her to continue in gymnastics and attend school,” Knight said.

De la Cruz, who attended college for one year in the Philippines, will have three years of eligibility at Fullerton.

“Everything about her eligibility has been confirmed,” Rogers said. “Our athletic compliance director [June Kearney] has signed off on everything, and she’s already enrolled for next semester.”

Rogers gives Knight credit for successfully handling all the details connected with De la Cruz becoming a Titan.

“It was a slow process, with all the paperwork that is involved with getting a foreign athlete enrolled, and you have to constantly be checking on everything,” Knight said.

De la Cruz will be the first foreign gymnast to compete at Fullerton since Francine Garrett from Israel in 1992.

Titan Notes

Baseball Coach George Horton hopes to restore an early-season tournament at Titan Field to the schedule in 1999. Most of that schedule, however, has been completed. The Titans will play five three-game series against nonconference opponents. The Titans will be at home against Houston, Stanford and Fresno State and on the road against Alabama and Nevada Las Vegas. . . . Titan gymnast Cortney Bogart had arthroscopic surgery on her right shoulder recently and will be sidelined about four weeks. “We don’t expect it to be anything serious,” Coach Lynn Rogers said.