Terry Miller Smith has been witness to the rise and fall of high school gymnastics in Howard County.

She was introduced to the sport in 1971 as an eighth-grader at the newly opened Hammond Middle School. Al Dodds, a physical education teacher there at the time, convinced his colleagues to put on a gymnastics exhibition for the PTA. The gymkana, as it was called, had group vaulting, group tumbling and some individual showcase pieces. All of the action was set to lively music.

"We had a blast and it sparked an interest in gymnastics for a couple of us," Smith said. "That was back during the days when you could jump on the trampoline and vault over the top of people."

Glenelg had the county's first high school team in 1969. Two years later three more schools added squads. Smith said she begged Dodds to coach at Atholton, the high school she would be attending, and he did for a year or two.

"Terry was really interested in gymnastics. She's a hard worker, very coachable and very enthusiastic," Dodds said.

Smith supplemented her school gymnastics by joining the JR Twisters, a club team coached by Joe Russo.

"Terry was one of my first gymnasts and my best competitor," said Russo, now the athletic administrator at Hammond High.

While at Atholton, Smith was the individual tumbling champion as a freshman and won several individual all-around titles.

"Sharon Titus (of Howard), Kathy Dunn (of Wilde Lake) and I flip-flopped back and forth, on any particular day, as to who won," Smith said of her chief high school rivals.

Smith competed collegiately at Towson State University. Gymnastics at the college level was very rigorous, and much more structured than she was used to. "Right away, I was put on a diet and told to lose 15 pounds. I learned a lot of discipline at that point of my life," she said.

When Towson qualified for the eastern regionals, Smith remembers competing against Olympians such as Ann Carr. "It was pretty impressive to be in that kind of environment and definitely it was a step up for me."

The Tigers placed fifth in the 1977 Eastern Regional Women's Gymnastics Championships, going 15-3 that year.

Because of student teaching, Smith didn't compete her final year at Towson. Instead, she returned to help coach at Atholton.

After getting a master's degree, she coached several years at Wilde Lake before returning to her high school alma mater. She had great success both places, leading Atholton to back-to-back state titles.

But by the early 1990s, the school system's athletic budget had to be trimmed. Following the 1993 season, and after much debate and agonizing, gymnastics and golf were dropped.

"I understood the mentality to what was happening," Smith said.

Safety was a concern. High schools couldn't match the club teams' state-of-the-art equipment and it was difficult finding highly qualified coaches.

"It made sense," Smith said. "Plus club teams were starting to take the kids and not letting them come to high school practices."

About the same time high school gymnastics was being phased out, Smith branched out in a different direction. She got involved with John Perna's club program in Baltimore County, and it wasn't long before she switched to the Carroll Gymnastics Center, a recreational/competitive program closer to her home. The Carroll club was in disarray and about to be booted from its county owned facility in Westminster.

At the last minute, the Carroll County Council reversed its decision and let the club stay and Smith was hired to be the director of the program.

Carroll Gymnastics really had a community feel, Smith said. "We all had to pull together to make it run." And because the club's building was used for voting, they all had to pitch in and put all the equipment away every time there was an election.

Under her leadership, Carroll Gymnastics grew from a core of 25 participants to more than 1,000 in 10 years. Smith also oversaw the move to a larger facility.

In addition to a community feel, Carroll Gymnastics also had a family feel. All four of Smith's daughters were gymnasts there.

Lyndsay, the oldest, always liked having her mother as a coach. "She wasn't afraid to push me," she said.

But Lyndsay is careful to point out that her mother did not push her and her sisters into gymnastics. "Once we got involved, she got involved so that she could stay involved in her kids' lives, and I thought that was important. If I wasn't having fun, she wasn't going to push me."

Smith was also supportive when her daughters started playing field hockey, which is her second athletic love. Chelsea is on the team at Frostburg State and Briannah, the youngest, will play at Division I Radford University starting next fall.

Smith got her field hockey coaching start with the Glenelg junior varsity after graduating from college. She said she enjoyed the game's different strategies. In 1984, she got a teaching job at Wilde Lake, where she coached gymnastics and field hockey.

"I figured out quickly that if you push (the ball) to the right you had great success" in field hockey, she said. "And we were in tip-top condition; I wouldn't let them lose because they were out of shape."

Her 1986 team won the county title and she twice took the Wildecats to the state semifinals.

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