Williams Ready For Nationals -- UW Gymnast Seeks Place Among Country's Best

It's quiet inside the dusty, padded room, the one the gymnastics team shares with the baseball team, in cavernous Edmundson Pavilion.

Barely a sound, except for a small radio oozing a pop FM station.

But inside Mike Williams' head, it's as loud as a parade. In his imagination, he is about to perform his final routine at the men's senior nationals, the showpiece meet for the country's top male gymnasts.

"OK, Mike, let's finish up," says Williams' coach, Mark Russo. "Do your best routine of the day."

Williams, a sophomore member of the University of Washington gymnastic team, closes his eyes. He can hear every person, from the floor to the roof, cheering their approval inside the University of Cincinnati's Shoemaker Center, where the 1991 U.S. Gymnastics Championships will be held next week.

"C'mon, Mike," teammate Mark Oliver says.

Williams rolls into a two-minute dance with the air, seemingly void of gravity or any other forces that constrain normal humans. He turns, rolls, rotates, leaps and lilts as effortlessly as someone twirls a pencil.

To the untrained eye, everything looks dreamily perfect, except for a quick stutter on his final landing.

"I had a little problem at the end," Williams said of his floor exercise after he came off the mat. "I'm still cleaning up minor details, making everything look sharp."

The routine Williams just finished is one of hundreds he practiced this month. He calls it a mental rehearsal, a near-hypnotic expulsion of outside distractions. The goal is absolute concentration.

"It teaches you to relax, to see in our heads what we want to do in our routines," said Williams, a 1989 graduate of Roosevelt High.

And for anyone who believes gymnastics is a quiet sport, Williams says this: "I like noise. It pumps me up."

He hopes to hear a lot of it next Thursday when he competes in his first senior national meet. His highest finish at junior nationals was fourth.

"It's been my goal to qualify for this meet for quite a few years," Williams said. "I've been to junior nationals three times, but this meet will give me a true idea of where I stand with the best gymnasts in the country."

Williams, 19, is ranked No. 43 among the 48 gymnasts who have qualified for the senior nationals. He qualified 19th in the senior regional meet, held two weeks ago in Colorado Springs, Colo. Williams is the only male qualifier from the state of Washington.

"These are the best gymnasts in the country, so just getting there says a lot for the program," Russo, the UW coach, said. "I've been here 11 years, six as a coach, and this is my first trip. I'm very excited."

Two other UW gymnasts, Mark Oliver and Karl Huntzicher, stood a chance of qualifying for senior nationals. But Oliver qualified 29th at regionals and Huntzicher injured a nerve in his back. Oliver, Huntzicher and teammate Daniel Luna all have experience at the junior nationals.

Russo competed for the Huskies after scholarships for the men's gymnastics program were dropped in 1980. Only one other Husky has qualified for the senior nationals since men's gymnastics became a club sport. Mac Smith, Russo's former roommate, did it in 1985.

They took more gymnasts to the senior nationals back then, and Smith didn't break the top 50. Williams already is guaranteed of doing better.

"Mike tends to rise up to the level of competition around him," Russo said. "That can be a weakness, too. If the competition isn't that good, he tends to drop with it.

"The thing that sets him apart from the rest of the gymnasts is that he has very explosive muscles. He's an explosive gymnast. You can see that in the floor and vault."

Williams will have to complete 12 routines, including compulsories and optionals. The pommel horse and floor exercise are his favorite events, the vault the trickiest.

"We're not working on moves anymore," Russo said. "Mike has to work on hitting his routines with as few repetitions as possible. You only get one or two warmup turns at nationals, and you have to be ready to go."

Lately, falls have plagued Williams. He fell three times at the senior regionals: once on the floor, once on the high uneven bars and once on the parallel bars.

At the Pac-10 meet, his first, he fell six times and placed 11th.

"It was kind of a disappointment, because it was my lowest score of the year," Williams said. "But I was happy to place where I did."

As a team, the Huskies finished last, but accumulated their highest point total since gymnastics became a club sport at the UW.

"The other gymnasts have some effect on me, because it makes me want to work harder," Williams said. "But it comes down to personal desire. You have to want to better, be a little more consistent, a little more daring." --------------------------------

MIKE WILLIAMS / BIO

College: University of Washington. Class: Sophomore. Age: 19. Accomplishments: He is the only male gymnast from the state of Washington to qualify for senior nationals; ranked No. 43 in the country; qualified 19th at this year's senior regionals; finished 11th at this season's Pac-10 Conference t last year's junior nationals. Goals: To make the 12-member senior national team; attend the Olympic Trials in 1992. Personal: Started gymnastics at age 12, because he was "tired of baseball." Moved from Idaho at age 15 and began training at the Washington Gymnastics Academy with Jim Holt. Graduated from Roosevelt High in 1989.