Girls Could Teach Recruits Something About Pressure

NAGANO, Japan —  Two weeks from tonight, Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski presumably will begin the freestyle program in the Winter Olympics women’s figure skating competition in first and second place, matching triple lutzes and double axels with a gold medal at stake and 100 million people or more watching on television.

That’s not pressure, not for them.

Pressure is the E-ticket ride many high school students signed up for Wednesday when they committed to major college football programs.

All will feel it, none more than Southern California’s foursome of blue-chip running backs--Justin Fargas of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (Michigan), Sultan McCullough of Pasadena Muir (USC), DeShaun Foster of Tustin (UCLA) and Mike McNair of Santa Ana Mater Dei (Notre Dame).

No way Kwan or Lipinski would trade places with them. Each is already at the top of her game.

Kwan, 17, and Lipinski, 15, might be younger, but they are much more seasoned in dealing with the challenges they are about to confront. Kwan, of Torrance, was skating at the senior level in the U.S. championships at 12, an Olympic alternate during the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan media circus at 13. Lipinski, of Sugar Land, Texas, was a world champion at 14.

As Lipinski said after earning a berth on the U.S. Olympic team, “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life.”

Her nerves are as steely as the blades on her boots.

Seeing that Lipinski was distressed by her fall in the short program during last month’s national championships in Philadelphia, a U.S. Figure Skating Assn. official tried to console her by pointing out that the skater could recover in the long program.

“I know that,” Lipinski said, brightening. “Let’s go to Starbucks.”

*

Before Xena, the Warrior Princess, there was Kwan.

This story has been told often, how when she was 12 she defied her coach, Frank Carroll, and took her advanced proficiency tests so that she could compete at the senior level in the national championships before she had ever competed as a junior.

Two years ago, during the World Championships at the Edmonton Coliseum, Kwan and Carroll locked themselves behind the door of a janitor’s closet so that she wouldn’t hear the scores announced for China’s Lu Chen. Kwan still heard them, including a couple of 6.0s, then went out and coolly earned two perfect marks of her own, upsetting the defending champion.

“Do you think people know what it’s like to compete like this?” Kwan asked Carroll during a similar interlude before her long program last month in Philadelphia. “How much stress and tension there is right now?”

Kwan didn’t give him a chance to answer before adding, “But, you know, I like it.”

*

I don’t mean to imply that players such as Fargas, McCullough, Foster and McNair have never dealt with pressure on the field. They led their high school teams to the playoffs last season, three of them to championship games.

But that will be intensified tenfold, now that they are carrying the ball and the hopes for the Wolverines, Trojans, Bruins and Irish.

Foster might have the heaviest load. Although the Bruins signed several high school All-Americans, it wasn’t until he committed to them over Texas that recruiting expert Allen Wallace of SuperPrep in Laguna Beach declared that UCLA has the best incoming freshman class.

Bobby Burton of the National Recruiting Advisor in Austin, Texas, ranked Michigan’s freshmen just ahead of UCLA’s but still piled on great expectations for the young Bruins over the next four years when he said, “They beat the pants off USC, which was one of the big disappointments.”

My advice to fans: No offense to the recruiting experts because they’re at least as smart as sportswriters, but don’t pay too much attention to them.

Wait and see how these young players respond when they reach college campuses, where they will face tougher opponents and professors. It wasn’t so long ago that the Trojans signed the No. 1 running back in Texas, while UCLA settled for a relatively anonymous running back from the same state. The Trojans got Delon Washington. The Bruins got Skip Hicks.

My advice to recruits: Don’t buy into the hype.

You’ve got enough to worry about without thinking you have to win national championships and the Heisman Trophy.

Concentrate on your classes.

Get involved in campus life.

Go to Starbucks.