By Bill Varble

Tsianina Joelson saw the Fitness America Competition on ESPN and said, "I can do that."

Turned out she could.

Competing against almost 100 young women in the finals of the dance/fitness pageant in Redondo Beach, Calif., she won the 1997 event. Not a division or a category; flat-out won the whole shebang. Hawaiian vacation, new car, guest appearances.

The triumph led to a co-host slot on MTV's dance/fitness show "The Daily Burn," and the ex-Coquille resident, now 24, soon parlayed that into a role in a Hollywood movie that starts shooting next week.

But today she's about as far from the fast track as you can get -- Shady Cove, to be exact.

Tsianina (sounds like Cha-neena) Joelson and her husband, Greg, 33, have a motel to run. Joelson's company built the new Edgewater Inn, which has its grand opening celebration today with Tsianina on hand for the festivities.

A two-minute video the Joelsons put together for casting directors gives a hint of Tsianina's talents. In "The Daily Burn," a buff Tsianina cranks it up. In a pilot for a martial arts epic, a tough Tsianina kicks butt. In an interview with New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter, a poised Tsianina talks jocktalk. In an appearance on Keenan Ivory Wayans' TV show, she does one-armed pushups with one leg locked in the other arm.

It's not like Joelson was a slouch to start. She'd won a world baton twirling championship, been a champion long jumper and placed fourth at the U.S. National Karate Championships. She studied dance with Vera Altunia of Russia's Kirov Ballet and was a dancer for the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers. She appeared in three Barbie commercials (one was, honest, Workout Barbie).

But her drama background consisted of one class at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, and she knew nothing about training for a fitness event. Enter her husband, Greg, who in his days as an outside linebacker and special teams player with the San Francisco 49ers and the San Diego Chargers had plenty of weight-room experience. The two soon developed routines for her.

"I'd trained for speed and ballistic movement," Greg says. "She had to modify it so she could develop her body aesthetically -- never a concern of mine."

It worked, and the Joelsons now have two careers going. A neck injury had ended a promising football career for him. In college, he'd been a walk-on at Arizona State, where they checked out his lineman's size and sprinter's speed and said, "Never mind the play, just go after the guy with the ball." He and his father opened the Pennywise, a Sutherlin motel, in 1996. They started construction of the Edgewater on an old sawmill site a year ago.

When they hit Fitness America, the Joelsons had barely left the Sutherlin motel in 10 months.

"She was cleaning rooms and folding sheets," Greg says.

"It was a long year," Tsianina says.

She went without a suntan, a tony swimsuit (her mom made her one-piece suit), jewelry, a nutritionist, a choreographer, a personal trainer or a routing section.

Her parents couldn't believe it when she won.

"It was insane," she says.

"It was surreal," he says.

Her co-host on "The Daily Burn" was "Baywatch" star Michael Bergin. That led to pilots with Warner Brothers and Jan DeBant (the "Die Hard" films, "Hunt for Red October") and a nod from Rolling Stone magazine as "The Hottest Body in the World."

Needing an agent, she landed with Burbank's powerful Gold Mashak Liedtke, the talent and literary agency, no less.

In Universal's "Cheer Fever," she'll play a 17-year-old cheerleader, a part she figures to nail.

"I have to go to cheerleader camp for a month," she says.

When the Joelsons aren't making casting rounds or attending Hollywood premieres, they're usually working at the inn in Shady Cove. When she's in L.A., she stays with her aunt and uncle.

"It's been a great ride," her husband says.

"We've been lucky," she says. "It's a dream, an adventure."

And those horror stories about Hollywood packaging actresses? She hasn't been there, hasn't done that.