Back-to-back meets on deck for w. gym
Bruins travel to Cal, then home for Boise this weekend
By Esther Hui
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The NCAA Championships in women’s gymnastics are known as much
for the killer format as the scores of cut throat competition.
The schedule begins with a preliminary team competition in which
the top three teams from two different sessions qualify for the
finals. The following day, these six teams compete the four events
again in the "Super Six" final competition to determine the
national champions. Without so much as a chance to catch their
breaths, the gymnasts suit up for the third and last day of
competition, the individual event finals.
For the elite gymnasts of the country, that could mean as much
as twelve routines in three days. To compete at such a high level
for so many days in a row takes tremendous conditioning, but
according to UCLA head coach Valerie Kondos, the most effective
strategy to surviving back-to-back competitions is technical
precision.
"The more technically well you compete, the less your body
hurts," Kondos said. "When you know you have to compete again the
next night, you’ve got to make sure you’re doing everything right,
because your body isn’t going to have a week to recover."
Such will be the Bruins approach this weekend as they travel to
Berkeley tonight for a quadrangular meet with California, Stanford
and Denver, and then return to Westwood Saturday at 7 p.m. for a
dual meet with Boise State at the Wooden Center.
The Bruins have an impressive 20-1 record against Stanford and
Cal, and are undefeated against Denver and Boise State. With the
solid gymnastics demonstrated already this season, UCLA’s goal will
probably not be so much to beat, but to demolish the
competition.
The Bruins will be shuffling the lineup slightly the first night
because of injuries and the back-to-back format. Junior Dee Fischer
will withhold from vaulting because of lower back pain, and
freshman Stella Umeh will not compete floor because of sore ankles.
Returning to the all-around Saturday night along with Umeh and Leah
Homma will be senior Kareema Marrow in what will be the first
simultaneous competition for the all-around between the three.
"We’re not going to compete our strongest squad on Friday,"
Kondos said. "We’ll have different athletes in different positions,
and we still expect to come out the victors. Then we’ll come home
and hopefully take it up a notch from last weekend. It should be
another exciting meet."