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AMERICAN GIRL


Jennifer Gates has become a top figure competitor in her first year as a pro

By Mark Thorpe | Photos by Ian Logan













She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good-lookin' mama who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on an Indiana night

— "Mary Jane's Last Dance," Tom Petty


Tom Petty began shoveling coal into the furnace of the American heartbreak song back when crocheted vests and wide lapels were aphrodisiacs. Over his 30-plus-year career, he has amassed a trove of breakdown dirges that any sentient being with ears would recognize. Of special note in this collection is a song about an Indiana girl, a restless beauty who must keep movin' on, movin' on.

To say that Jennifer Gates somehow resembles that girl probably verges on the disingenuous. On the other hand, Jennifer is on the move. And where she stands now is likely only a temporary respite on her way to the top of her sport. In a matter of months, she created her own Hoosier hysteria with an unprecedented rise into the upper echelon of figure pros.

"I've had a great year," she says of her 2007 run. "I don't think what has happened to me has happened to anybody in the sport. In three months I turned pro, qualified for the Figure Olympia, won my first pro show and placed fourth in my first Olympia."

Dizzying might be the best way to describe her ascent. One might even be tempted to note that meteoric rises are just as often accompanied by spectacular flameouts. Jennifer, though, seems uniquely inured to the too-much-too-young-too-fast crash. While she's relatively young at 30, she has the wisdom and maturity of a much more experienced competitor.



GREW UP FAST

For as long as Jennifer can remember, she watched her father Dave Crawley, now a national-level masters bodybuilder, gut his way through one workout after another in preparation for one of his amateur shows. She remembers well the strict diets, the disciplined training schedule, the self-sacrifice. Even his holiday meals were carefully parceled out while the rest of the family flouted the FDA's food pyramid with second and third helpings. Weights were as common as furniture in her household.

When Jennifer graduated from high school in 1995, she got married, joined the Air Force and had a son, Peyton. She had hoped to be stationed in Hawaii. Instead she ended up in Anchorage, Alaska, where she worked as a dietitian in an Air Force hospital for two years. Juggling the responsibilities of parenthood and work was trying for the young couple.

"We would trade shifts," she says. "I would work the morning shift and my husband would work the night shift. It was very depressing."

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