Two and a half years ago, I wrote in this exact space, the Hump Day Hoopla, that ASU gymnast Ashley Kelly should try out for the U.S. Olympic team that will compete in the 2008 games in Beijing.
It was the beginning of the fall semester in 2004. The Athens Olympics were just ending. And that previous spring, Kelly, a sophomore at the time, had just won a national championship on the balance beam for the Sun Devils.
Considering Kelly had topped Michigan's Elise Ray - a star on the 2000 U.S. Olympic team in Sydney - for her balance beam title, I thought Kelly had a realistic chance of making it to the sport's highest level four years later.
Kelly, now 23, initially said she doubted it would happen. During her junior and senior seasons competing at ASU, she said the Olympics were not in her plans.
"All the way up until my last bar routine at the NCAA Championships, I thought I was going to be done," said Kelly, who's been participating in the sport in some level for nearly 20 years. "I was dealing with not being in gym, telling myself to stop thinking about it."
Then she changed her mind.
Throughout the current school year, Kelly had been a volunteer assistant coach for the Sun Devils while she finished her degree. She would stay in ASU's practice gym after the team left doing flips and passes for the fun of it. But it wasn't enough.
When Kelly visited her parents' home in Pennsylvania during Christmas break, the idea of the Olympics was weighing heavy in her mind.
While at home, Kelly and her family drove to Gaithersburg, Md., where they investigated a gym owned by renowned gymnastics coach Kelli Hill, who has trained former Olympians such as Dominique Dawes.
Turns out, that gym is where Kelly will be spending most of the next 12 months as the visit sold Kelly on the idea of trying out for the Olympics.
Kelly graduates from ASU on May 10. Two days later, she will drive a U-Haul full of her belongings from Tempe to Maryland to train at Hill's gym, where she will begin workouts May 15.
"She's been around the sport a long time," Kelly said of her new coach. "She has had someone on the Olympic team probably the last four Olympics. This year, she doesn't really have anyone else training for that. So hopefully I can keep the trend going at her gym."
Not done yet
Unlike most gymnasts who are finishing up their college careers, Kelly is a better athlete leaving ASU than she was entering it.
She followed a quality freshman year with an even better sophomore season, when she won the balance beam national championship.
After an injury-plagued junior year, Kelly followed it up with a senior year that saw her ranked as the second-best gymnast in the nation throughout the season behind 2004 Olympian Courtney Kupets, who was a freshman at the time for Georgia.
While its true most gymnasts tend to peak as teenagers, Kelly appears to be an exception.
"That's when girls are small - they haven't really hit puberty," she said. "In gymnastics, you're flying through the air, you're defying gravity. A lot of bodies can't hold up this long. I hope mine does. I'm doing good right now. I've been lucky I guess."
Another top gymnast to break the age trend was former UCLA Bruin Mohini Bhardwaj, who was two years removed from gymnastics and working as a cocktail waitress when she began training for the Athens Olympics. She eventually made the team at age 25.
Kelly said Bhardwaj was better in Athens than she was as a teenager, and Kelly believes she can do the same thing.
"I went back and watched some of my old tapes, and I was like 'I suck,'" Kelly said. "I think my form and overall look was way better in college. I feel I'm definitely getting better.
"I have more confidence in competing. I just remember getting out and doing a beam routine (in club gymnastics) and just being so nervous. Now, it's like nothing to me."
Calling all boosters
Kelly almost quit gymnastics before she came to ASU.
She competed at the International Elite level during high school, but grew weary of the daily grind of intense training and pressure from coaches.
Kelly could have named her college, but she chose ASU because coach John Spini promised her she would have fun competing in Tempe.
That she did. If it wasn't for her having such a successful career at ASU, Kelly said she wouldn't have aspirations of the Olympics right now.
"I did a lot better than I thought I would in college," Kelly said while sitting a few steps from the ASU sports Hall of Fame at Sun Devil Stadium.
"I thought it would be something to just get me through college, but it was definitely an experience I would never take back. I'll always be able to walk in here and see my picture. I'll miss it here. I love ASU."
Kelly is a Sun Devil through and through. Spini has called her not only the best gymnast in ASU history, but one of the school's finest athletes in any sport.
After four years of breaking records and winning meets for ASU, now the school has a chance to give back to one of its finest.
Kelly estimates that training for the Olympics - between relocation costs, living expenses and training tuition - will cost more than $55,000. Since she will be training seven hours a day, she won't have time for a job. She needs a sponsor.
Bhardwaj gained national recognition before Athens when Pamela Anderson footed her entire bill training expenses. Kelly doesn't necessarily need a Hollywood figure for support - an ASU booster will do just fine.
I'm talking to you, Sun Angels.
ASU has had plenty of athletes compete in the Olympics in the past, but none have ever gotten the exposure that being one of Team USA's six gymnasts in an Olympic games will.
Gymnastics is watched more than any other sport in the summer games.
And Kelly could be the ultimate ambassador for the largest school in the United States.
Reach the reporter at: chris.drexel@gmail.com.
