Brittney and her fellow gymnasts were examples of the expected boost in athletic participation due to this summer's Olympic Games, held in Beijing, China.
Fairland director Chip Harris said traditionally there is an increase in sports registration every four years because of the hype over the Summer Olympics, and recently she has seen an increase in calls from parents interested in enrolling their child in swimming, tennis and gymnastics lessons. Harris said she will not have the exact numbers of the increase until September when fall registration completes.
Frankie Mathews, 11, of Hyattsville said she has been in gymnastics since age 6 and got started because she "liked to jump around on stuff." Frankie, who said she sees herself chasing Olympic possibility in the next four years, said the beam is her favorite event because she enjoys a challenge. Her least favorite is the vault.
"You kind of need speed and a lot of power, and I'm not really fast," Frankie said.
Many of the Fairland gymnasts said their favorite athletes were either 18-year-old Texas native Nastia Liukin or 16-year-old Iowa native Shawn Johnson, who took home the gold medal and silver medal Aug. 15 in the all-around competition, which judged each gymnast's performance in every event.
"When you have two outstanding Americans like Liukin and Johnson, I think that spurs not only a sense of pride in American youth and American athletes but also an increased awareness of sports available," Harris said.
Patti Delaney, gymnastics manager for Landover's Sports and Learning Complex, said there is always a lull leading into the Olympics and then registration picks up for most sports, particularly for gymnastics because Delaney said parents "want their child to be that little cute thing on TV."
"I would think that swimming is going to be in the same kind of situation considering with how many records are being broken," Delaney said. "Michael Phelps being from this area sort of helps that."
Delaney said it is too early to say exactly how much registration has increased but said some classes have already filled up.
"It's going to be a bigger year in the Olympic year," Delaney said. "It always is."
Eleven-year-old Anne Rowe of West Lanham Hills showed her stuff in the Junior Olympics Skills Challenge held July 26 at the University of Illinois-Chicago, shooting as many baskets as possible in 45 seconds.
"Baseball and softball are my favorite," Anne said. "I just got in there by luck."
Anne is enrolled in Glenarden Community Center director Michael Kurland's physical education program designed for home-schooled students. She decided to try out for the Junior Olympics Skills Challenge regional competition held at Glenarden Community Center and qualified for the national competition in Chicago to represent the east coast 10- to 11-year-old division.
Anne made four shots to rank third of three competitors in her group who represented California and Minnesota. One shot made from the free throw line counted for three points.
Another P.E. program teammate of Anne's, Katherine Wolff, 8, of Bowie also represented Prince George's County in the 8- to 9-year-old division.
"Granted, it's not going to China, but in its own right she got to see a little bit of the world at age 11," Anne's mother, Helen Rowe, said.
In addition to competing, Anne said she took trips to the Lincoln Park Zoo and a Chicago Cubs baseball game with fellow athletes and met real Olympians such as Patricia Miranda, the first American woman to medal in women's weightlifting in the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
Helen Rowe said she is amazed at how much more athletically inclined her daughter is than she herself was as a child and applauds her courage to try new things despite having Von Willebrand disease, a blood disorder that prevents blood from properly clotting. Today she only takes medication when necessary, but Helen Rowe said at ages 3 and 4, her daughter had as many as two to three nosebleeds a day.
Anne will continue to take P.E. classes at Glenarden Community Center this fall, and her mother is trying to talk her into joining the Greenbelt Municipal Swim Team for the upcoming season.
Anne, who has memorized a good portion of Baltimore native Michael Phelps' daily breakfast, said she can see herself shooting for Olympic success and has been following 2004 Olympic beach volleyball champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.
"I might want to go there for maybe tennis or beach volleyball because now I have Olympians to follow in their footsteps," she said.
E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net.
