THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250366
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 164 lines
Even if they wanted to, and naturally it crosses their minds, they could not bring Lauri Illy home. It would not be fair. Their 14-year-old daughter longs to be a world-class rhythmic gymnast, of all things. She wants to be an Olympian and, more than that, to leave a lasting mark in her sport.
Lauri, they say, has decided this on her own. She is as self-directed and disciplined as 14-year-olds get. So Rocki and Larry Illy, the parents, swallow their heartache and keep sending the money from Virginia Beach to Evanston, Ill., where their daughter lives and trains.
It is their only option. ``You can't go clipping their wings before you let them fly,'' they say. It is the essence of their parenting philosophy, but after four years, sending the money is harder than it's ever been.
Rocki and Larry are broke.
They declared bankruptcy late last year. Their paychecks take care of the bills and little else. Their credit cards are gone, their debts reorganized. Ask them if they have a savings account. Watch how hard they laugh.
Understand, they never cared about getting rich - Rocki is a home-care nurse; Larry, who studied to be a priest, is a social worker for the city of Norfolk. They want to live a happy life together, serve others and leave behind three productive citizens in children Lauri, Jeremy (17) and Jacob (16).
What happened, though, is their talented daughter fell in love with a sport that is filled with people a lot wealthier than they. Then she became very good at it very quickly. So quickly that her original goal, the 2000 Olympics, has been pushed up four years, which accounts for Lauri's presence tonight and tomorrow in the U.S. Rhythmic Gymnastics Trials in Boston.
In no time, Lauri outgrew Hampton Roads. The advanced coaching she needed to fulfill her potential does not exist here. If it did, she'd be home, training hard, playing with the cat, two dogs and three birds that share her family's Rock Creek ranch house, preparing to enter Ocean Lakes High School.
Instead, she had to go to the coach. She was only 10. Yet when Lauri, unpolished as she was, turned heads at an international meet in Colorado four years ago, the coaches started calling.
Lauri started answering. And Rocki and Larry realized there was no turning back. Or standing in the way.
``We were both crying, because we knew at that point Lauri had to move away,'' Rocki says. ``It was one of the hardest decisions we've ever had to make.
``I said, `Larry, I can't let her go, I just can't.' He said, `Rocki, if she wants to do this, and if we can do it, are you going to be the one to tell her you won't let her go?' No. I don't think I could have lived with that.''
To know Lauri Illy, you must know her parents.
Raquel Arellano was born on the family ranch near Mexico City 47 years ago but moved to South Bend, Ind., when she was 8. Larry Illy, 44, is a Virginia Beach kid who graduated early from Kellam and was a month away from taking the vows of priesthood at 19.
Uncertain about accepting that calling so young, Larry enlisted in the Marines and never returned to the vows. He was an Old Dominion undergraduate and part-time Catholic education teacher in 1975 when he met Rocki, whose daughter from a prior marriage was in Larry's class.
Rocki and Larry married two years later.
Rocki is bubbly and loquacious. Larry is more the introvert, and he doesn't seem to mind at all when Rocki finishes his sentences for him. What makes them alike, however, is a sensitivity that touches all corners of their lives.
Rocki nurses patients riddled with cancer, paralysis and degenerating minds. Larry is in child protective services, part of an emergency response team that works the night shift. Often, he arrives to domestic disputes where children are involved before the police do.
He has been shot at. Sometimes he comes home so gritty from working a bad neighborhood that he undresses outside. There are moments when he and Rocki weep together over what they have seen. There are moments of frustration, anger and confusion.
But Larry doesn't move on to something else, he says, because God has directed him to this work, and he has not yet completed it.
``It's not only Larry's commitment,'' Rocki says. ``It's our commitment. The whole family's.''
This is how they stomach separation from their little girl and their painful fiscal reality. Lauri's commitment is their commitment - the same goes for any of their children, they say - and it will remain so until Lauri decides it is over.
``How can you not do it, that's what I want to know,'' Rocki says. ``If Lauri was a mediocre gymnast, we would've said, `OK, money's out, come on home, that's the end of it.' But she's not.
``Look at what she's doing, what she's accomplishing. It's not our joy ride. It's her, it's coming from inside of her. You have to let her fly.''
Under the direction of Lana Lashoff, a former Ukrainian rhythmic gymnast who has coached in the United States for 10 years, Lauri fast became a top junior competitor. She has been on the national team since '94 and performed in France, Egypt, Colombia, Korea and Mexico.
In her first re-ranking meet as a senior last winter, Lauri finished second to national champion Jessica Davis. She was fifth, however, in the U.S. championships last month, but rallied from a botched ball routine the first day to place in the top eight and qualify for the Olympic trials.
``I'm probably more proud of that fifth-place trophy than anything,'' Rocki says. ``It would have been so easy to say, `Oh, well, I'm 27th, I'll never make it.' But she didn't. She cried her tears, she pulled herself together, and then she came back like a lion.''
To feed that fire, Larry Illy says it costs, on average, $800 to $1,000 a month for Lauri's rent in an Evanston family's home, coaching fees, school lunches and general living expenses. That's on top of a $250 to $300 monthly phone bill.
Other costs are always cropping up - equipment, performance music, transportation to non-national team meets, medical and therapeutic services she requires, etc.
Rocki and Larry say they fund everything with a combined income, after deductions, of roughly $3,000 per month.
They started sinking soon after Lauri moved away in the summer of '92. The thing is, the family was supposed to move, too. Rocki found a job, but Larry says he's been turned down everywhere he looked in the Chicago-Evanston area.
No social agencies will even approach his salary requests, he says. They all hire kids right out of college, pay them dirt, then hire more kids when the others leave.
For the first couple years, Rocki moved to Evanston for five months at a time. But as the checking account shrank and the credit card debt went out of control, Rocki had to stay home.
She scours for odd jobs. Larry and the boys do, too. If it's legal and it pays, they say, they'll do it. Rocki makes Lauri's leotards, dyes her ribbons, cold-calls businesses - so far unsuccessfully - in search of sponsorships.
They cut corners everywhere. For instance, Lauri never trained or competed in those slippers gymnasts wear out like crazy because, at $75 a pair, Rocki and Larry couldn't afford them. But when Lauri's bare feet were bleeding last year, Lashoff insisted.
Finally, to stop their own bleeding, Rocki and Larry entered bankruptcy court.
``We don't expect a free ride, we never have,'' Rocki says. ``Both of us work very hard. But it got to the point where we realized the only way we could continue with Lauri, or just not go down any further, was to do something desperate.''
``It was the very last resort for us, and that's very hard to take because up until that point, we'd managed somehow to make it all happen, for all our kids.''
``To me,'' Larry says, ``it's a big stigma, because all these years we've been trying, and it's like this was the final . . . It hurts. It hurts that I had to go through this because I couldn't pull my own weight.''
Lauri says she knows her parents ``could save so much money if I wasn't in this sport. But my mom explained to me that I should stick with this. She knows I want to do it and she wants me to be happy.''
Yes, Lauri feels guilty sometimes, Larry says. ``But we tell her, `Look, Lauri, if you're coming home, it's not because of us. It's because you want out.' ''
If Lauri doesn't win the trials to claim the country's lone Olympic berth, well, four more years are plenty long when you count every penny. It's just that, in the end, what counts most to Rocki and Larry Illy is the belief that souls are supposed to soar.
``Everybody has to do their job,'' Rocki says, ``and Lauri's job is to follow her goal, do what she has to do and do it well. If she can say she did it, that she didn't waste it, then it was well done. And well spent.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
JIM WALKER/The Virginian-Pilot
Along with the financial burden of their daughter's training in
Illinois, Rocki and Larry Illy of Virginia Beach feel the pain of
separation. But, they say, ``You can't go clipping their wings
before you let them fly.''
FILE
Lauri Illy will compete tonight and Wednesday in the U.S. Rhythmic
Gymnastics Trials in Boston, where eight athletes will vie for this
nation's lone Olympic berth. She finished fifth in the U.S.
championships last month.
KEYWORDS: OLYMPIC GAMES GYMNASTICS PROFILE
BIOGRAPHY by CNB