(Hrabrova) Spencer, who helps coach Williams on
beam and floor. “As we all know, the judges are not
into the swing of things in the beginning. Nobody
heard about her, nobody knew who she was.”
Hrabrina, whose husband, Lance, also helps
coach Kayla, was trained by Bozhi, her father.
(Lance’s father owns Glendale Gymnastics in
Parkersburg, the first private club in West Virginia,
founded in 1973.) She also understands the injus-
tice of international judging. She was on the 1988
Bulgarian Olympic team that finished fifth in Seoul,
though many contend it should have won the
bronze, which went to East Germany.
Still, Hrabrina realizes Kayla needs some work to
become a more complete performer on floor.
“She’s got a disadvantage in her flexibility, which
we work so much on,” she says. “But it’s hard
when God didn’t give it to you.”
Hrabrina, an extremely expressive floor worker
in her day, certainly has the background to develop
Kayla. “With the work of (Bulgarian native) Antonia
(Markova), the (U.S.) national team choreographer,
we did improve a lot on her dance,” Hrabrina says.
“And Antonia was telling her, ‘You listen to your
coach. She was one of the better dancers….”
As the only elite at Gym Nest, Williams gets all
the attention she needs. She sandwiches two work-
outs around a modified school schedule, and says
she doesn’t have much time for hobbies or a
boyfriend.
“She’s very pleasant to work with,” Hrabrina
says. “We do have our frowning moments, too, but
we do a lot of… laughing. She’s the only [elite] in
the gym—she’s the only one in the state. There’s
no competition. You gotta make the practices
somewhat fun to be around if you’re going to spend
so much time at the gym.”
When Russev first saw Williams as a 6-year-old,
he says he “wasn’t impressed.” But in time he was
sold. “During this time I met a lot of talented kids,”
he says. “After teaching, you see who has the most
important feature: hard work. That’s what Kayla
has. Passion, ambition and hard work. Self disci-
pline? Perfect.”
Williams, who describes Bozhi as “laid back” and
Hrabrina as “forceful … very straightforward,”
admits bars is her weakest event. But she did win
beam at the J.O. nationals in 2007. On vault, she
continues to train an Amanar and is trying to clean
up her handspring-rudi. “I’ve seen the pictures from
worlds,” she says with a laugh. “It’s not as pretty as
I’d like it to be.”
With the emergence of Williams on vault and
floor, Karolyi suddenly has a capable replacement
for 2008 Olympian Alicia Sacramone, should her
comeback ever fizzle. Says Williams: “I would love
to be able to compete against her and see what
would happen.”
A junior at Huntington High School, Williams is
looking forward to competing in college—“I will not
go professional”—and her future goals include
more international assignments and “maybe worlds
again.”
Maybe? It would be hard not to include a defend-
ing world champion on the team.
Like his best pupil, Russev was a hard-working
gymnast in 1960s. “He was one of the most graceful and most elegant gymnasts at the time,”
Russev recalls how he ruined both of his shoulders, however, which kept him off the 1964
Olympic team. At 18 he was the youngest member
of the national team, and also in the Army.
“I was training most of the time without a coach,
and I did a lot of stupid things to train myself,” he
says. Russev trained in the afternoon with the
national team, and again at night when the soldiers
were allowed to practice their respective sports. “I
was working too much. And I remember on top of
that, I was doing, almost every night, 300 leg lifts
with an eagle grip. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve
done. I wore out my shoulders.”
When communism dissolved in the early 1990s,
After winning the Level 10 J.O.
nationals in May (above),
Williams made the senior
national team in August (left).
JEFF SIPSE Y (FLOOR); JULIA PATRIARCHE (AWARD)
Russev moved to the U.S. He had
been a coach of the Bulgarian
women’s team at the 1991
Indianapolis worlds, and was
offered a coaching position in West
Virginia. When he got there, however, the gym had shut down.
“I suffered five months with no
money,” Russev says. “It was a
crazy and sad story. Then I started
to work at the YMCA with three
girls.” After Russev built a strong
YMCA program, he, his wife,
Prior to Williams, 1984 Olympic champion Mary
Lou Retton was the only other notable West
Virginian to make it big in gymnastics, but she did
it in Houston under the Karolyis.
Russev was even warned by a competitor that
running a gym club in West Virginia would not be
easy. “They were kind of challenging me, the best
gym here,” he says. “The guy who owned that gym
quit doing the gymnastics program with the com-
ment that ‘Here, it is impossible to make a gym-
nast.’ He was wrong!”
Enough said. IG
