Gymnastics has become Vitale's whole world

There's a story somewhere in the back of Plainview JFK coach Debbie Rut's mind. The details are vague but the title is not: Young Victoria Vitale Against the Vault.

"She was little at Phoenix [club gym] and she was having trouble with the vault, so she [ran up] in the lobby" as if she were vaulting "and she ran straight into my arms," Rut said. "We've worked together. I know what she can do."

It was years ago - after Vitale kicked off her gymnastics career at the age of 2 and before she became the linchpin of the now-undefeated Plainview team - but Rut remembers. A lot has changed and a lot more hasn't: The vault still freaks her out sometimes, Rut is still there to push her along, and gymnastics is still an intimate, family-type affair.

Indeed, even in a sport in which fiercely competitive athletes sometimes chant for the other team, Plainview is an anomaly. They are a squad of happy thoughts and good feeling, and Vitale exemplifies this. One of the team's biggest rivals, Bethpage, is managed by her former coach, Kim Rhatigan. The teams were a combined squad until 2008. The assistant coach? That would be mom.

"It's not bad, actually," Vitale said. "It's funny because I've had Kim and coach Rut, so I've worked with all three of them because obviously, my mom is my mom . . . I'm very close with the Bethpage team, to the point that when we compete, it's not even like a meet. It's a fun time together."

The ties run deep. Rut and Rhatigan coached together; Victoria's mom, Vicky, competed with Rut when they were kids; the girls sometimes practice together. Yet, for all the group hugs and family connections, both Plainview and its star gymnast have shown no lack of competitive fire. The team is 9-0 overall and 8-0 in ability-based Conference I and must face undefeated Massapequa on Tuesday for the perfect record.

Rut, for one, is all business when it counts. "I will never cut a kid, but the kid usually cuts herself," she said. "They know if they can make it. They know what I expect and I do expect a lot from them only because I know they have it in them."

Vitale, so far, has proved she has it in her. Only a sophomore, she's one of the team's two captains and its most consistent high scorer. She most recently notched a meet-high 34.7 against an always tough Oceanside. That sort of success comes because of the strong connections, she said, not despite them.

Right now, it's what drives her, especially after Plainview lost two of its top gymnasts to graduation.

"It's harder for us now," Vitale said. "We really need to hit everything, there's more pressure to stay on the beam. We have to stick together. We're such a good thing when we're together and we're always helping each other up."

It wasn't always like this, of course. Vicky, who, when her daughter joined varsity, watched from the sidelines, admitted being worried when her daughter joined the varsity in seventh grade.

"When you come in as a seventh-grader, you're kind of lost looking at the older girls," her mom said. "I was a little nervous, but I look at her now and how far she's come, maturitywise, and how the seventh-graders look up at her, and it's like, wow."

Maybe it's the genes, maybe it's the fact that Victoria has been flipping since around the time she could walk, or maybe it's something else entirely, but Vitale has most certainly come into her own.

It's still not easy. It's been years since she ran into Rut's arms, but she still has to psych herself out before a vault. She's been struggling with her tsuk pike. She's done it, and she's done it in competition, but "I'm scared," Vitale said. "I have to get over it every time I do it."

She's not complaining, though. For Vitale, the girl with the family and the friends steeped in gymnastics, this world has become a way of life.

"If I had to stop, I couldn't," she said. "It's been with me since I was little. If I stopped, it would feel like something different. It's weird. A vacation is one thing but not doing it? I'd be flipping in the streets, then. I'd be doing cartwheels in the supermarket."