It’s do-or-die for the Bruins, who are riding the coattails of an improbable run by another team on campus.
No. 13 UCLA gymnastics (6-2, 4-2 Pac-12) will head to Morgantown, West Virginia, on Friday with a chance to capture the program’s 25th NCAA regional title and earn a spot in the 2021 NCAA championships. Should the Bruins fail to secure a top-two finish in both the regional semifinal and final, their season would officially be over.
Coach Chris Waller said the team discussed how it could learn from UCLA men’s basketball’s Sweet 16 upset victory.
“We talked about some of the things that we could glean from that game,” Waller said. “And one was just their fighting resilience, that they just never quit and they hustled, but it wasn’t stupid hustle.”
Waller called out redshirt sophomore guard Tyger Campbell’s overtime steal and fast-break layup, adding that the team can learn from Campbell’s patience with a defender on his back.
“As John Wooden would say, ‘He was quick, but he didn’t hurry,’” Waller said. “And that applies to all of us and everything we do.”
In the basketball spirit, Waller and his coaching staff devised a special blue versus gold challenge for the Bruins in practice.
The challenge consisted of an intrasquad competition between the blue team and the gold team, in which national championship-quality routines earned three points, while national championship-quality skills earned two points if they were done in a routine and just one point – a free throw – if they were done outside a routine.
With an elimination meet on the horizon, Waller said the competition served as a reintroduction to competition after the bye week.
“Last week was a whole lot about getting healthy and working individual details,” Waller said. “(This week has) been a refocus on team competitiveness – building confidence through working together.”
@UCLAMBB THANK YOU FOR INSPIRING ME!! y’all got me turnt😭💙😂 ready for regionals weekend!
— Nianation💎 (@DennisNia) March 31, 2021
Should UCLA secure a spot in the regional final with a top-two performance against No. 4 Michigan, Kent State and West Virginia on Friday, the Bruins face off against the two winners of the other regional semifinal, headlined by No. 5 Cal and No. 12 BYU.
In the event that UCLA advances, the team would compete twice in two days for the first time all season.
Freshman Chae Campbell, who has competed in the all around in all but one meet this season – which came in the middle of a three-meet stretch in 10 days – said competing on all four events is something she’s been doing her entire gymnastics career.
“I’m not going to look at it as a challenge. I’m going to look at it as an opportunity to give my best for my team,” Campbell said. “Gymnastics is just gymnastics, and I’m going to do my mental sets and do my mental choreography, do all that stuff – make sure I’m healthy, eating the right foods and just go out there and have a good time.”
After missing the entire regular season with a sprained ankle and subsequently returning to the lineup in the first competition of the postseason, junior Norah Flatley said she and her teammates have used the bye week to focus on health.
“We’re just getting plenty of recovery outside of the gym – eating right, drinking our cherry juice and getting plenty of sleep and ice baths,” Flatley said.
But even when she hasn’t been in the lineup, Flatley said she takes pride in being a motivating factor for her teammates.
“Hype woman has been my role pretty much all season because we don’t have fans, so making sure I constantly bring the energy to the girls – acting like I’m the 13,000 fans in Pauley even though I’m one person,” Flatley said. “That’s been one of my main jobs and I take that very seriously.”
The former All-American on bars said she stuck her first dismount on a hard surface off the uneven bars in the final practice before the Pac-12 championships. Nevertheless, Flatley scored a 9.875 in her routine, which would have tied the junior’s season high from last year.
Almost two weeks removed from Flatley’s first routine of the season, Waller said he hopes to have the three-time All-Pac-12 honoree back in the beam rotation this weekend.
Flatley – after completing a beam routine with a dismount on a softer surface in practice earlier this week – said her ankle has largely recovered from the sprain, which occurred minutes before the 2021 season began.
“To be honest, I didn’t really know where I was going to be this whole season and if I was going to even be able to come back, and then, literally in the past three weeks, my ankle started to feel really good,” Flatley said.
UCLA ranks a team-worst 19th in the nation on beam. The Bruins needed a 48.825 at the Pac-12 championships to secure a season-best team performance but instead posted a season-low 48.425 en route to a third-place finish.
Campbell guaranteed a solid beam rotation this time around, conditioned on the team trusting its training.
“I think the overall message would just be to not get inside our heads too much,” Campbell said. “We all know that we’re capable of doing the skills, and we all know that we’re capable of doing consistent beam routines. So heading into this meet, we just want to do what we’ve been training – nothing more, nothing less. And as long as we do that, we’ll have a solid beam rotation guaranteed.”
UCLA will start on bars at 4 p.m. on Friday and will start on the vault or floor at the same time Saturday should the Bruins avoid an upset and finish in the top two on day one.
