COMPETING INTERESTS : Painful Back Condition Fails to Stop 11-Year-Old Former State Champion Gymnast

Georgina Lillich was known as the “Lucky Dog” when she first showed up at Monarchs National Gymnastics Training Center in Agoura Hills.

The nickname was somewhat of a misnomer. Because her flexibility was so poor she needed help from dance coach Laurie Williams in the stretching exercises--assistance that had its price.

“She stretches you, you get no mercy,” Lillich said.

Now, four years later, Lillich, 11, has put those dog days behind and is one of the top gymnasts on the club. But she can still be considered lucky: She competes despite a painful back condition; two siblings, whose physical activity is limited by health problems, are not as fortunate.

“Some people can’t do stuff, like people who are paralyzed,” Lillich said. “I’m just glad I can do sports. I like to do flips off bars, and I like twisting on tumbling.”

In December, Lillich’s gymnastics career took a tumble from which it looked like she might not recover. Lillich felt twinges and aches in her back. The pain eventually became unbearable.

The problem was diagnosed as spondylolisthesis, a condition that involves a slipping disk.

Two months of rest alleviated the problem, which may have existed for three to five years before the disk finally slipped. But Lillich still experiences periodic flare-ups. Occasionally she is forced to curtail her workouts or limit the maneuvers she performs. Frequently, she just fights through the pain.

“It’s always in the back of my mind,” she said of the condition. “Sometimes it can get so painful you can’t take it anymore. Sometimes it starts hurting really, really bad. Then after 10 minutes it goes away.”

A pain in the back can become a pain in the neck during the four- to five-hour workouts Lillich performs during the summer. Five days a week she travels from her Camarillo home to the Monarch facility to train with Coach Mike Bisk.

All that summer work is geared toward the youth gymnastics season, which doesn’t begin until March. Most seventh-graders would chafe at the deferred gratification derived from of working all summer for competitions months in the future. Not Lillich.

“Meets make you a lot more nervous,” she said. “You could have a bad day in the summer, and it wouldn’t bother you. But before a meet, you’d be like, ‘Oh, no.’ I try not to, but I always get nervous. Sometimes I get so stringed up I can’t sleep. I try to breathe. That’s a good start.”

Lillich said that her favorite, and best, event is the uneven parallel bars because “usually in meets you have no time to shake on bars. On beam, your legs are on the (beam), your hands are free, it’s shake time.”

She recorded an 8.9, a personal best, to win the uneven bars in the 1988 state meet in the Class III intermediate optional division. She also won the all-around in the 10-year-old age group in that meet and finished second among 11-year-olds this year.

Recently, Lillich competed in the Judges Cup, a multistate competition held in Fountain Valley. She placed third in the all-around and helped her Southern California all-star team to the championship.

“Georgina is a very good gymnast with a relatively good body type,” Bisk said. “She’s strong, she’s quick, she doesn’t have a great fear factor, and she’s relatively flexible.”

Lillich’s strength is, literally, her strength. She packs a lot of power into her 4-foot-8, 78-pound frame and spring-loaded arms--arms she hopes eventually will vault her onto a college team or into the Olympics.

But that’s projecting quite a way into the future. Lillich, a straight-A student at Las Colinas grade school, will worry about being a seventh-grader for now.

“If I can’t make it to college or can’t make it to the Olympics, I won’t be disappointed because I’ve tried my hardest,” she said. “I know I can’t set myself up to be put down.”