All-around gym champion
Diamond is a risk-taker
Colts Neck frosh wins state section and
SC crowns
BY TIM MORRIS
Staff Writer

Lindsay Diamond and gymnastics were a perfect fit from the very start.

The 2003 Shore Conference and Central Jersey Section I all-around champion quickly discovered from the beginning, when she was just 4 years old, that the sport fit her personality perfectly. Gymnastics accentuated her fearlessness.

"I was always good at going for the high-skill moves," she said. "I’m not afraid of anything."

Diamond, a freshman at Colts Neck, won the SC all-around title by stepping out of character. It was a conservative and consistent, albeit winning, routine on the uneven bars that carried her to the title.

"I was most interested in having a clean routine," she said. "I made my routine easier and clean. I had no idea I would win it."

Diamond’s errorless uneven bars routine so impressed the judges that she finished first (9.575). That score gave her a .4 edge over Red Bank Catholic’s Beate Jones, which was enough to make up for the lead the RBC freshman had gained by winning three events, and earned the Cougar the AA.

"I was pretty much hoping for the top three," said Diamond. "I didn’t expect to win. I’m really happy.

"I didn’t know how important the conference was until people began making such a big deal about it afterward," she added.

What surprised Diamond the most was her overall performance. The risk-taker unusually avoided mistakes.

"I usually have two or three events that I do well on and one I don’t," she said. "I was surprised that I didn’t fall."

Diamond’s road to the conference all-around title began on the treacherous balance beam. That’s the one event that will make the most confident of gymnasts shake.

Diamond, though, can still thank her daring self for helping her win the championship. She decided to go with a vault, a lay-out tuck, that she had never done in competition before. She didn’t warm up well with the tuck but went with it anyway.

That risk-taking is part of Diamond’s makeup. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a tougher competitor. She missed two months earlier in the year because she has two vertebra in her back out of line and a bulging disc. It amounts to a broken back, but that wasn’t enough to stop her.

"I really missed the sport," said Diamond.

As a result of her injury, Diamond has to compete through pain at times but it hasn’t affected her routines.

"I try not to think about it," she said.

Since Colts Neck does not field a gymnastics team, Diamond slipped into the conference championships as an unknown quantity. She attained her qualifying scores as a non-scorer at meets in Marlboro.

Saturday, anyone who may have thought that Diamond caught the competition off-guard was silenced as the Cougar frosh added the state sectional AA title to her remarkable season. She again nipped RBC’s Jones for the championship, 36.750-36.650.

Diamond did not win any individual title at Manalapan High School, instead she relied on her consistency. She was second on the vault to Jones (9.700-9.350), third on the uneven bars (9.250), third on the balance beam (8.950) and second, again to Jones, on the floor exercise (9.200).

The first five finishers in each event at the Central Jersey Section I meet qualified for the state championships, which will be held Saturday at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Other local gymnasts who have extended their seasons to include the state championships are Freehold Township’s Katie Lane, who was second on the bars with a 9.350 score; Manalapan’s Arielle Phillips, who was second on the beam (9.025); and Jaclyn Mandelbaum of Marlboro, who was fifth on the floor exercise (9.100).

Marlboro finished third, with a 105.725 score, behind Red Bank Catholic (107.850) and Ocean (107.025). Host Manalapan placed sixth (98.600).

Diamond hopes that before her career is over she will be a part of a team at Colts Neck High School. The Cougars would certainly be off to a great start with a conference and state sectional champion leading the way.