COURTNEY STEWART Freshman Jamie
Dantzscher performs in the floor exercise at this year’s
NCAA Championships in Atlanta, Georgia, where UCLA captured its
second consecutive national title.
By Adam Karon
Daily Bruin Staff
Critics called them the greatest group of college gymnasts ever
assembled.
With senior leadership from Mohini Bhardwaj, a group of
sophomores that helped win the national championship last year, and
a freshman class featuring four Olympians, the 2001 UCLA gymnastics
team had opposing coaches cringing with jealousy.
What coach wouldn’t want to have the sort of talent
possessed by Bhardwaj, freshman Olympian Jamie Dantzscher and 2001
all-around champion Onnie Willis?
But despite such talented drivers, the Bruins’ road to the
national championship was anything but smooth.
The team arrived in Westwood in three stages. Most of the girls
started school as scheduled with the rest of the student body.
Freshmen Yvonne Tousek, Kristen Maloney and Alyssa Beckerman
stepped off an airplane onto the UCLA campus from Sydney,
Australia, where they were competing in the Olympic games, while
Dantzscher arrived a few months later, and the four girls began
their transition.
“These were four athletes who had the right to be burned
out,” Head Coach Valorie Kondos Field said. “They only
had one day a year off during training. Gymnastics held a negative
connotation to them. For the first few months the only reason they
were doing it was so they could get their scholarship to
UCLA.”
But under the skillful hand of Kondos Field, who was named
National Coach of the Year for the fourth time in six years, the
team slowly gelled into one of the most dominating in the history
of college gymnastics.
“We had such an amazing team with all that talent, it was
expected of us to repeat,” Bhardwaj said. “As a whole,
the team handled that pretty well. It’s a lot of
pressure.”
The original team goals were to go undefeated for the season,
and repeat as national champions. The first goal lasted all of
three weeks, as the Bruins dropped a dual meet to Arizona State
196.35-196.
“You set goals and you don’t always reach
them,” said Willis, who also earned a 4.0 winter quarter
while competing this year. “It was good because it allowed us
to evaluate why it didn’t happen.”
What the scoreboard didn’t show was that the meet
epitomized what the Bruins’ coaching staff stressed all
season. UCLA could have easily beaten ASU with its best athletes,
but its lineup against the Sun Devils featured girls who were not
regular starters. Valuing competition and experience over pure
victory, the coaches sacrificed an undefeated season to develop the
team as a whole.
Following the meet, Kondos Field posted a statement on the
team’s Web page: “I believe that “˜winning at any
cost’ is tragic and destroys life lessons. It was extremely
rewarding watching athletes who don’t see a lot of
competition time compete as a Bruin with the same pride, enthusiasm
and fight as our athletes who compete a lot.”
In today’s cutthroat world of college athletics, this
attitude was refreshing and would serve the Bruins well later in
the season.
After the defeat, UCLA reeled off of a seven-meet winning
streak, including a school and Pac-10 record 198.25 score against
Oregon State. The team beat eventual NCAA runner-up Georgia,
dismantled NCAA third place Michigan, and generally dominated each
meet until the Pac-10 finals.
Each athlete on the team considers the Pac-10 championships and
the following NCAA Regional Tournament to be the major turning
point this season. The Bruins traveled to Washington expecting to
take their 10th Pac-10 championship, but came home empty handed.
The Stanford Cardinal upset the defending champions
197.85-197.8.
Most teams would have been bitter over the defeat and a few
judging discrepancies. Not the 2001 Bruins. They took the loss as a
wake-up call, and went on to give one of the finest championship
performances in recent memory.
“I thanked the Stanford coach profusely for that
meet,” Kondos Field said. “That was the turning point
for us. That was the point where we were going to work harder, and
get mentally tough. We took destiny into our own hands.”
The Bruins went on to dominate the competition in the Regional
Tournament, which took place here in Westwood. UCLA scored a
197.775, with the next highest scorer, Oregon State, putting up a
distant 194.075.
“The day before regionals we had a team meeting and we set
some different goals we wanted to attain,” said Willis.
“Regionals was a turning point. We had team unity that we
hadn’t had all year.”
This team unity snuck onto the team plane and made the trip to
Athens, Georgia for the 2001 national championship. Many considered
UCLA the favorite, but winning its second consecutive title was not
an easy task.
The University of Georgia was not ready to be embarrassed at
home and engaged UCLA in a dog fight that lasted until the final
competition. A fall on the beam would mean that the next mistake
would cost the team the national championship. With the pressure
on, four straight Bruins stuck their beam routines, capped by
Bhardwaj’s 9.9 to hold on to victory and steal the Gym
Dog’s glory.
“I had coaches come up to me that said they could not
imagine another team in the country that could have pulled that
off,” Kondos Field said.
“They’re the best collegiate gymnastics team in the
history of NCAA,” Kondos Field concluded.
“Think about it: we have an awesome sophomore class who
were freshman when they put it all on the line last year, and then
you have four Olympians,” Bhardwaj said. “Not all
collegiate teams have that. The combination is huge.”
And even though the combination caused a few potholes in the
road to the Super Six, the 2001 UCLA gymnastics team arrived at
their destination in style.
GYMNASTS IN GEORGIA SOURCE: NCAA Original
graphic by ADAM BROWN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by ROBERT
LIU/Daily Bruin Senior Staff