Alicia Sacramone will have the eyes of the world upon her at the Summer Olympic Games next month in Beijing.

AP / David J. Phillip

One arrived at Brown already a star, another became a star after Brown, and a third won two national championships at Brown.

The three are on their way to Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Alicia Sacramone of Winchester, Mass., is the best gymnast in Brown history. As a freshman in 2006-2007, she was the ECAC rookie of the year and the first gymnast in Ivy League history to win every event and the all-around at the Ivy Classic.

That was nothing compared to what she accomplished last fall, when she led the United States to the 2007 World Championship, edging China for the title. A multiple medalist on the world stage, she finished first in the vault and fifth in the beam and floor exercise at the U.S. Olympic Trials last month in Philadelphia.

Anna Willard arrived at Brown in 2002 from the tiny town of Greenwood, Maine (pop. 802). She was the state champ in cross country and middle distances in high school but didn’t blossom at Brown until her junior year, when she started running the 3,000-meter steeplechase. By the end of her career, she held 10 Brown records and was All-Ivy.

With a semester of eligibility remaining, she went to graduate school at the University of Michigan, ran outdoor track and won the steeplechase at the 2007 NCAA Championships. Running as a pro for Nike, she won the U.S. Olympic Trials at Eugene, Ore., on July 3, setting an American record.

Portia Johnson McGree graduated from Brown in 2001. She rowed on Brown’s NCAA championship teams in 1999 and 2000 as a member of the winning varsity eight. She will compete in women’s pair at Beijing.

Sacramone was in Texas the last few days “to clean up final things and to stay in shape,” she wrote in an e-mail. She and her teammates will stop in San Jose for meetings and training, if there is time, and then fly to Beijing. The gymnasts will train there, march in the Opening Ceremonies Aug. 8 and begin competition Aug. 10.

Sacramone is familiar with international competition. At the 2005 World Championships, she won a gold medal in the floor exercise and a bronze in the vault. In 2006, she won silvers in the team competition and vault. And in 2007, she earned a bronze in the vault, silver in the floor exercise and gold in the team competition,

She is prepared to perform with the eyes of the world upon her.

“It’s just a bigger competition than the Worlds,” she wrote. “You’re competing with the top teams in the world alongside all of the other sports. The gymnastics competition will be the same. I’m excited to be part of the team and excited to compete over there. It’s definitely nerve-racking, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s such a big competition.”

Sacramone, 20, is the unofficial leader of the U.S. Gymnastics Team because of her experience and personality. Martha Karolyi, the U.S. team coordinator, has said she couldn’t imagine a U.S. team without Sacramone.

“I welcome the recognition and responsibility, and I’m honored that the girls look up to me,” she said. “It’s definitely not something I went out and did. I didn’t do anything specific. It’s just the way I am and the way I was brought up.”

Her success at the 2007 World Championships prompted Sacramone to turn pro. She was a volunteer assistant coach at Brown last fall and took the spring off to train for the Olympics. She missed her teammates but doesn’t regret her decision.

“It was a tough decision, but the right one. I needed more time to myself to train. I need the proper amount of rest, and it gave me my sanity back a little bit,” she said.

As a freshman, she had trained with her Brown team and with her personal coaches, Mihai and Silvia Brestyan, in Massachusetts, logging hundreds of hours on the road.

“I definitely have improved my skills since 2007, and I’m hoping for a better showing than the 2007 Worlds. I’ve put a lot of work into the gym, and it would be nice to be rewarded (with) my dream of becoming an Olympic medalist,” she said.

Sacramone said she misses “the whole team thing that a college gymnastics team is all about” and she plans to return to Brown after the Games. She and friends have leased a house and she will start classes again in the spring.

Willard came to the steeplechase by accident. As a junior at Brown, she substituted for an injured teammate and set a school record in her first race after only two weeks of training.

At Michigan she trained in the fall and winter and set the collegiate record and won the NCAA championship in the spring. She was the Big Ten track athlete of the year after winning the steeplechase, 1,500 and 5,000 at the Big Ten Championships, the top female runner at the 2007 Penn Relays for her role in the record-breaking 4x800 and 4x1500 relays, and Michigan’s female athlete of the year. She finished second at the U.S. National Championships and went to her first World Championships.

She credits Brown coach Craig Lake for jump-starting her career in her senior year.

“She really got in my face and harped on lifestyle and said this is what you need to do to become what you want. She really changed a lot for me. She started having me do tempo runs and really attacked the mental aspect of the sport and changed a lot of who I am today,” Willard said after the U.S. Trials.

She added that although she finished sixth in the steeplechase at the 2006 NCAA Championships, she underachieved in her senior year at Brown and “had that fire still and wanted to keep competing.” Not good enough to turn pro, she went to grad school and ran for Michigan.

“Having a race to think about the entire year is a lot of motivation. I thought about nationals the whole year last year and came away with a win,” she said.

That opened the door for her to run for Nike.

Since winning the U.S. Trials in record time, Willard has been competing in Europe. She was at a meet in London on Friday. After a three-day visit home, she will fly to Beijing.

“It’s pretty cool to be part of history,” she said, referring to the inaugural Olympic steeplechase. “The Olympics is pretty cool alone.”

Johnson McGee, a four-time senior national team member, will be competing in the Olympics for the first time. She has won World Cup and World Championship and was USRowing’s 2007 female athlete of the year.

Brown will have another representative at the Olympics. Jerome Romain, assistant track coach, is the coach of the Dominica Olympic Team. He competed for Dominica at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and made it to the finals in the triple jump but injured his knee and could not finish. He was one of the top triple jumpers in the world from 1995 to 2000.

“It is definitely an honor to be chosen as the coach for Dominica, but what is even more special and so humbling is that 12 years after competing in the Olympic Games for my home country, I am now heading back to the Olympics to coach,” he said upon his selection.

mszostak@projo.com