by John Y. Wehmueller | Staff Writer
Richard Montgomery junior Erin Hylton put roughly 13 years, and eventually as many as 34 hours per week, into a gymnastics career that included a fourth-place national showing on the uneven bars one year ago.
She had been running track for not quite three months before earning a state championship medal.
‘‘I showed up at practice the first day, I had no idea what to expect,” Hylton said. ‘‘They looked at me and were like, ‘Oh, man, that girl’s got muscles. She’d better be running the 400.’ ... I really didn’t think it was going to be that strenuous: ‘It can’t be that intense, compared to gymnastics.’ It was definitely harder than I expected, but it was good.”
Hylton’s state medal came as part of the Rockets’ 4x400-meter relay team that finished first at the 2007 Class 4A state championships last May. She also had a hand in county and 4A West Region titles in the event, and joined the team at the prestigious Penn Relays in Philadelphia. It took only until the Penn Relays, in late April, for the track neophyte to crack Richard Montgomery’s top 4x400 team.
As this spring season gets underway, Hylton is no longer a dark horse. She may not win another state title this year — half of last year’s 4x400 team was lost when Ashley and Ashlyn Decruise graduated — but ought to be one of the Rockets’ top points-earners. The biggest question for coach Matt Wheeler is which events she should concentrate on.
‘‘It’s still up in the air,” Wheeler said. ‘‘We’re really going to try to get her more involved in the jumping and hurdles events. ... The strength and body control she has from gymnastics correlates with any of the jumping events. The speed was just kind of a bonus.”
Wheeler’s first instinct when Hylton fell in his lap last spring was to have her pole vault, the field event whose mid-air contortions most resemble gymnastics. But it turns out, Hylton quickly learns whatever event, or even sport, she tries. She made Richard Montgomery’s tennis team as a doubles player this fall, after picking up a racket for the first time two months earlier. In the winter season, she tried diving, a sport that actually does resemble gymnastics, right down to the occasional face plant.
She never knew about her natural aptitude for other sports, though, because until last spring, gymnastics was the only sport Hylton had ever tried. She started taking lessons from Gymnastics of America at the age of 2. In fifth grade, she began training at MarVaTeens, on Randolph Road in Rockville. There, she was under the guidance of Ken Anderson, whose honor roll of former pupils, according to Hylton, includes Olympic gold medalist Dominique Dawes, whom he trained while at Hill’s Gymnastics in Gaithersburg.
Gymnastics took Hylton to international competitions in France and Italy, and twice to Nationals. She was 14 when she took fourth in her age group on bars, her best finish. But within two years, midway through her sophomore year of high school, she made the difficult decision to call time on her gymnastics career.
‘‘It’s so difficult: mentally, physically,” she said. ‘‘I decided I didn’t really want to go to college with it. And I’d already gone about as far as I could go in the sport without being home-schooled or putting in even more hours. ... I’d go for an hour and a half before school and five hours after, so it was a pretty intense schedule. And I decided I wanted to have time to do other sports, because I’d never done any.”
She chose track because it seemed the easiest sport to take up. She’d never swung a softball bat or cradled a lacrosse stick; running and jumping, she’d done. Still, Hylton had no previous training in technique _ pole vault can be especially tricky, which is why so few high-schoolers compete in it — so Wheeler figured her for a long-term project.
‘‘My big concern was, don’t get discouraged if you’re not immediately at the same level you were in gymnastics,” he said. ‘‘She was at such a high level, I was afraid that it would be tough on her coming out and not being the best. ... The joke by the end of last year was, ‘What’s this sport? You come out and win a state championship right off the bat? I thought this was supposed to be hard.’”
This spring, Hylton figures to be one of the top pole-vaulters in the area, if not the state. She’ll also continue running the 400, either individually or as part of a relay. Wheeler believes the triple jump could be her breakout event this year, while Hylton said she especially enjoys running the hurdles, which she tried for the first time less than two weeks ago.
‘‘I just started hurdles, but I really think I can get somewhere with them,” she said.
Based on what she’s done so far, it wouldn’t be a big surprise.
