By ERIC AHLQVIST
Editor

Like many young girls, Amie Rowland fell in love with the women's gymnastics team featuring Karri Strugg and Shannon Miller, which won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

And like many young girls, she began doing gymnastics shortly afterward.

But unlike many others, Rowland, who will be a senior at Cooperstown High School in the fall, has steadily risen up the junior national rankings, and is currently ranked first in the YMCA Northeast Region in Level 9.

"I was 12 years old in 1996 when I saw the Olympics and that's how I got started," Rowland said last week. "I called the YMCA in Oneonta, and they had classes, so I just started taking them and eventually I started going to competitions."

Rowland will have her biggest competition to date this weekend when she travels to the YMCA Gymnastics Nationals in Niagara Falls. Rowland explained that there are 10 levels plus an Elite Class, which is the highest level.

"Amie is pretty amazing, and is probably the best gymnast I've ever coached," said her coach, Dick Miller, who has coached gymnastics for 29 years. "She has the physical ability and combines that with the psychological desire to be the very best she can be. She goes on the internet and gets information, and goes to Valley Gymnastics in Utica for private lessons sometimes, as well as three, two hour sessions with me a week."

This will be Rowland's first chance to see how she matches up nationally, as last year she was supposed to go but suffered a foot injury.

"I will be competing against all of Level 9 and 10, plus the Elite Class, so there is going to be very strong competition," she said. "You compete for two days and then break into an upper finals and lower finals. My goal right now is to make the upper finals."

Miller said he doesn't want Amie to set individual goals.

"Gymnasts like Amie only come along once in a while, but my philosophy with my students is just to compete as best you can on that day and see where you end up," Miller said. "That way, you have the satisfaction of knowing you did your best."

Rowland, who said her favorite event is the floor exercise and her most difficult the uneven bars, said she would like to continue her gymnastics career in college next year, and has given some thought to coaching the sport eventually.

"She will probably go to a Division Three program because Division One is usually reserved for those athletes who take private lessons and dedicate most of their life to the sport," Miller said. "Amie is a great student and has many things going on in her life besides gymnastics. Whatever she does, she wants to do it well."

And usually succeeds.