Morgan White knew it the second she polished off her performance on the balance beam. Her routine was next to spotless. She stuck her landing. The crowd roared. White's heart was in her throat.

	"Everything was clicking for me today," says White of her Sunday performance which earned her an Olympic berth.

Morgan White was going to Sydney.

The Central Christian Academy (Fairfield, Ohio) junior became the only high school student to make the six-member U.S. women's gymnastics team Sunday in Boston, Mass., after she turned in an overall performance that was bettered only by returning Olympian Amy Chow.

"After the beam, I said to myself, 'Oh my God, I'm going to make the team,'" says White, 17. "But I didn't want to jinx myself because I still had the floor exercise to do."

White definitely saved the best for last. On a day when two-time Olympian Shannon Miller took a nasty fall on the vault and other Sydney-bound gymnasts made minor slips, White set the bar with a final-day score of 38.080, her best score of the four-day trials. The performance was good enough to catapult her past recent San Dimas High (San Dimas, Calif.) graduate Jamie Dantzscher for fourth place in the overall standings and a solid spot on the Olympic team.

"I don't think it's sunk in yet, I'm so excited," says White. "I wanted to go out and be consistent and hit my routine and I did better than I thought. Everything was clicking for me today. Everything was going great."

White will join Chow, Dantzscher, 1996 Olympian Dominique Dawes, recent Wilde Lake High (Wilde Lake, Md.) graduate Elise Ray and Kristen Maloney on the team. White's close friend, Alyssa Beckerman, will serve as one of the alternates. Recent home-schooled graduate Vanessa Atler, of Canyon Country, Calif., didn't make the team, even though she finished sixth in the scoring, ahead of Dawes. While Atler may later be picked as an alternate, national team coordinator Bela Karolyi said Atler had the talent to make the team, "but talent is not enough when you are representing the United States."

The selection of the women's Olympic team was heavily based on the gymnasts' performance at this past weekend's trials, but there's room in the process for some subjective decision making by Karolyi and the rest of the section committee. The women's performances at the Olympic preparation camps, other international performances, overall experience and team strategy is also taken into account.

Rachel Tidd of the Calvary Christian School (Escondido, Calif.) and home-schooled high school sophomore Tasha Schwikert of Las Vegas, Nev., are the other two gymnasts Karolyi mentioned as possibly filling the second alternate spot. Schwikert, 15, finished ninth in the trials with an overall score of 73.583. Tidd finished slightly behind Schwikert in 10th place with a 73.407.

"I'm satisfied with how I did," says Tidd, 16. "I went in not expecting to make the team; I don't have the name or the experience some of the others had, but now I have the big-time experience of an Olympic trial and I learned that I can do it under big-time conditions."

White proved she could perform her best under pressure. The Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy performer entered the final day of competition in fifth place, with less than a point separating her from Beckerman, who was in eighth place. White started the day by sticking a 9.193 on the vault, her best score of the four-day trials. After her weakest event was out of the way, White scored a 9.612 on the uneven bars, an electric 9.625 on the beam and a 9.650 on the floor, the last of which ignited a roar from those in Boston's FleetCenter.

"Morgan is a very stable link in the team," says her coach, Jack Carter. "Morgan has that boom-boom-you-can-do, go-out-and-do-your-stuff-and-leave ability about her. She will be the Jaycie Phelps (1996 Olympian) of our team, which is fitting because Jaycie came from Cincinnati, too."

White began competitive gymnastics training in 1988. She won the 1998 Junior National Championship, earned a spot on the U.S. women's 1999 World Championship team and captured the 1999 Pan-American Games all-around title. She specializes in the uneven bars.

White and the rest of the team will spend Monday at their respective homes before flying to Karolyi's ranch in Texas for two weeks of intense training before the 2000 Olympics begin in Sydney, Australia.