Even as a seventh-grader, All-American gymnast Stacey Wegener knew she'd finish her athletic career as a Louisiana State University Tiger. But halfway through her senior year at Archbishop Blenk High (Gretna, La.), Wegener wasn't sure her gymnastics career at LSU would ever begin.

An alternate for the 1995 Level 10 national team, Wegener signed a letter of intent that November to attend LSU the following fall. At the insistence of Bill and Joy Schmidt, her coaches at the West Bank Gymnastics Club, Wegener had to give up all other sports , even though she had already quit playing basketball and track.

"My coach really didn't like us doing other sports," says Wegener. "It was kind of hard at first. I had to miss out on a lot of stuff."

	In December 1995, Wegener visited her doctor, who told her she had ruptured a tendon. Because she had waited so long to see him, the doctor told Wegener she needed surgery immediately if she wanted the finger to function normally.

The Schmidts weren't trying to punish Wegener. They just didn't see the sense in her risking injury playing other sports when she had a future in gymnastics. Wegener, after all, was a two-time member of the national "A" team. At 11 years old, she had turned down an invitation to move to Houston and train with Bela Karolyi, who coached Olympic champs Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.

But Wegener didn't listen to the Schmidts. And in a flag football game, she jammed her right ring finger. Wegener discovered after the swelling subsided that she couldn't bend the finger.

In December 1995, she visited her doctor, who told her she had ruptured a tendon. Because she had waited so long to see him, the doctor told Wegener she needed surgery immediately if she wanted the finger to function normally.

That night, Wegener checked into the LSU Medical Center in New Orleans, where a surgeon reattached the tendon where it had ripped.

Wegener couldn't hide the injury from her coaches, but she tried to hide how it happened. "I told them I slammed it in a door," says Wegener, who will graduate with a degree in kinesiology from LSU next month.

She didn't tell them what really happened until her freshman year of college.

"We figured that it wasn't the truth," says Bill Schmidt. "It was a pretty flaky story."

Wegener worried the injury would cost her a spot on the LSU gymnastics squad, but head coach Sara Breaux reassured her the scholarship offer remained firm. Wegener's only worry then was rehab.

Bill Schmidt says he never doubted his star pupil would recover. As a 9-year-old, she won a regional high-bar championship despite a swollen sprained finger. At 3, her parents brought her to West Bank for the first time and, while other kids struggled to touch their toes without toppling over, Wegener performed six chin-ups.

Still, Schmidt didn't gamble.

"We never tried to rush her," says Schmidt. "We went with what the doctor said and were maybe a little more cautious."

By May 1996 Wegener could grip a high bar without fear of reinjuring her finger. "I still had that hesitant feeling," she says. "I had to gradually start back into gymnastics."

While her finger still was a little weaker than she wanted it to be, Wegener joined the team at LSU in August 1996. She says she was nervous at first, competing in college after seven months away from competition. But she adjusted.

Says Wegener, who was seventh in the NCAA in the balance beam this year as captain of the Tigers, "Once fall was over, I felt fine."

Needless to say, she hasn't played flag football since.