Courtney Kupets, a member of the 2004 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team, has always kept a low profile. Although she is a focused, driven, athletic powerhouse, she is above all a humble 18-year-old member of the Kupets family.

The gymnast, a high school senior living in Gaithersburg, Md., was born in Bedford, Texas, and baptized in Holy Rosary Parish in Republic, Pa., where several members of her extended family are parishioners.

Her father, Mark Kupets, a native of Republic, attended Holy Rosary School and graduated from Brownsville High School in 1974. He met his wife, Patti, at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Ind.

The couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary by going to Athens, Greece, with their son, Mark Justin, 21, daughter Ashley, 20, and son Christopher, 16, to cheer Courtney in the Olympic competition from inside Olympic Indoor Hall. To their delight, Courtney earned two medals --- a silver as a member of the second place U.S. team, and a bronze in the uneven bars.

Members of the extended family were intently watching Courtney on television from Republic and Uniontown, Pa., Virginia, Texas and Maryland.

Martha Kupets is amazed every time she watches her granddaughter, who has been a gymnast since age 3. She gets nervous when her granddaughter performs, but she also frequently asks, "How'd she do that?"

A parishioner of Holy Rosary Parish and resident of Republic since 1956, Martha attends daily Mass, serves as a eucharistic minister, and says she has all the ladies in the beauty shop cheering on her granddaughter.

"It's just been her life for so long," said Joyce Kupets, Courtney's aunt and a Catholic schoolteacher in the Greensburg Diocese.

After suffering a torn left Achilles tendon at the 2003 World Championships in Anaheim, where the team won a gold medal, Courtney returned two months later determined to get ready for the Olympic trials.

Her godfather and uncle, Dan Kupets, said the injury didn't stop his niece, that the members of the Kupets family are all tough athletes who recuperate and go on. "When you're in a sport like this," he said, "you have to be mentally tough, because it's just you, yourself and the apparatus."

Courtney's grandmother said that even in the Olympics Courtney was "just doing what she loves."

---CNS