Sacramone finds this to be old hat

Families don't work this way. When you're the baby, you stay the baby all the way to the graveyard. But in gymnastics, where a new generation is born every quadrennium, you go from last to first in the birth order in a couple of years.

Alicia Sacramone might as well have arrived in a bassinet when she made her first national team five years ago. Now, at 20, she's the grande dame, the college woman who's the unofficial guardian of this teenage collection of ponytails.

"It's so strange because I'm the baby in our family, and to be the grown-up to everybody, it's crazy," says the Winchester native and Brown University sophomore, who'll be bumping elbows with the high schoolers in this afternoon's final session of the US championships at Agganis Arena. "When did I become this old? It's nice growing up, I guess. Kind of crazy, but nice."

Sacramone's primogeniture in the gym comes with certain perks. "Nobody's allowed to touch the music," she says. "I'm the one who plays it." But the privileges end when everyone lines up on the podium. Just because Sacramone captained last year's team to the global gold medal doesn't give her a birthright for one of the six places on this summer's Olympic team for Beijing. She has to earn her way on, just as world champion Shawn Johnson does.

So when people suggest to Sacramone that she, Johnson, and two-time US titlist Nastia Liukin all are locks to make the team, Sacramone does a deft sidestep. "I just avoid the question," she says. "I say yeah, OK, cool, thanks."

Though Sacramone can't earn one of the two automatic all-around spots at this month's Olympic trials because she skips the uneven bars, she'll almost certainly make the squad as a specialist because of her exceptional skills on vault and floor. Her credentials are rock-solid: seven medals at the last three world meets, including a gold on floor and one on vault each year.

While team coordinator Martha Karolyi puts a premium on competitive fitness when making selections, consistency and pedigree also count considerably. "You have to make a lasting impression with her," Sacramone says. "I think over the last few years I've painted a pretty nice picture for her because I've come a long way and she's seen my progression."

What Sacramone also has going for her are the intangibles - contagious optimism, boundless energy, and embrace of the big moment. No moment was bigger than last year's world championships in Germany, where the Americans trailed the Chinese going into the final rotation.

Sacramone, who would be going up last on floor, gathered the group around and gave them an unscripted, Eruzione-style fight talk. "I'm a pretty passionate person, so I get lost in the moment and that's what happened at worlds," she acknowledges. "It all came out. I was just blabbing." Then, Sacramone went out and nailed her routine, clinching the first team gold for the US women at an overseas global meet.

Passion and percussion are her trademarks. Watching Sacramone thundering down a vault runway or attacking a tumbling pass on the floor is like watching a one-woman drag race. Her afterburners kick in quickly. There's no governor on Sacramone's throttle, nor on her mile-a-minute mouth.

"Sometimes I'll think, come on, Alicia, are you really going to say that out loud?" she says, laughing. "Sometimes I may say something that's maybe not proper for the moment, but I feel like I'm never a cocky or arrogant person."

The impromptu life suits her. Last year, when a friend dared her to knock him out for a YouTube video, Sacramone promptly obliged. "It kind of hurt my hand for two days after," she confesses. "I was like, arrghh, that's the last time I hit somebody."

There have been no knockout punches since, certainly not in an Olympic year. "Martha would kill me," Sacramone says. "She'd probably hang me."

All those world medals are wonderful, but the Games are what matter. Nobody remembers what Mary Lou Retton did before she turned up at Olympus in 1984.

That's why Sacramone took a year off from school after the fall semester, moved back home with her parents, and became a full-time gymnast for the first time in her life. "I just figured if I was going to do it, do it right and take the whole year off," she says. "Because if I do make the team, we have tour afterwards and all the crazy publicity things that can happen."

Sacramone juggled college and gymnastics when she was a freshman, competing for Brown's varsity and commuting twice a day to Brestyan's Gym in Burlington to keep her elite skills sharp. Besides putting thousands of miles on her Acura, it also put a few thousand on her mind and body.

Now, all Sacramone has to worry about is staying healthy for two months and perfecting her routines. This week's nationals made her queasy with anticipation. "I thought I was going to throw up," she admitted after Thursday's first session. "I was, oh God, my first meet since worlds and I'm this nervous."

The palpitations didn't show. Sacramone had three strong routines, finishing second to Johnson on vault and floor and a creditable fourth on balance beam. Had she wanted to do bars, Sacramone easily could have been in the top six.

She has been at this game long enough that she knows how to get herself on a national team, as does fellow veteran Chellsie Memmel, who is sitting third behind Johnson and Liukin in her first full meet in two years.

"We've been through the process," observes Sacramone, who'll get an invitation to the trials two weeks from now in Philadelphia even though she won't be among the top 12 in the all-around here. "We know what we have to do and we can just pull it out."

Sacramone and Memmel, who turns 20 later this mionth, are the two oldest contenders here. "It's good to have a partner in crime who's my age," Sacramone says. Liukin is 18, Johnson and Samantha Peszek both only 16. Sacramone was motoring up I-95 for workouts when most of her peers were still in driver's ed. "You unofficially become everyone's older sister and they come to you with ridiculous little problems that I just laugh at," she says. "But I like it. It's nice to have 20 younger sisters."