Underdog is finally an Olympian

When most athletes make it to an Olympic team, there's euphoria and chaos and a big crowd at Olympic trials, and it's the experience of a lifetime.

For 27-year-old former BYU gymnast Guard Young — son of 1976 Olympian and former BYU gymnastics coach Wayne Young, now an Orem obstetrician — when he was finally named to the 2004 U.S. Olympic team last Thursday, you could have heard a pin drop in the meeting room in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"It was dead silent," said Young, who recalls just a brief "sigh of relief" that his Olympic dream had finally come true on what he had already decided was his last career attempt at the Games.

Young finished sixth in the U.S. Olympic trials at Anaheim, Calif., last month, and six athletes advance to Athens — but only the first four actually made the team then.

The other two spots were chosen last week by a selection committee after another two-day qualifying "meet" involving seven hopefuls in a near-deserted gym in the Springs. None of the athletes actually knew what the committee was looking for as they went through another tryout of sorts.

They waited 1 1/2 agonizing hours past the time the committee said it would make a decision. Finally the athletes were called into the committee room for the verdict.

Guard's name was announced first, and then veteran Olympian Blaine Wilson's. Young heard no more. He was already thinking in his mind of the things he would need to do to be ready to compete in Athens.

Later, the Oklahoman couldn't even tell his wife Alisha, also a BYU alum, which gymnasts had been picked as alternates to the team because he hadn't heard.

He described the moment he heard his name called as "solemn, almost like numbing."

He and Wilson and the alternates stayed in the room, and there were quiet handshakes; the others left, gravely disappointed.

"I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. It was very difficult," said Young's coach, Mark Williams, who is also his boss as head coach of the University of Oklahoma men's gymnastics team. Young is Williams' assistant. Williams, a former club coach in Woods Cross, began training Young at age 12 at two Oklahoma clubs when his family lived there.

"I don't know that I would want to live that again," Williams said of the announcement. "It was a little bit surreal. It took us the rest of that weekend (spent on team preparation in Colorado Springs) before, 'Wow, we made the Olympic team,' " Williams said.