April 11, 1998
Defending NCAA Champion UCLA is among the field of 12 teams, 12 all-around competitors and four event specialists which qualified to the 1998 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships, held April 16-18 at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion. The Bruins enter the Championships as the No. 10 seed after making a stunning comeback on their final event at the West Regional Championships Saturday, April 4. UCLA scored a meet-high 49.4 on the vault to climb up from fourth to second place in the Regional. Bruin senior Stella Umeh made her own personal comeback, scoring a perfect score of 9.9 on vault after falling on her head and injuring her neck on UCLA's first event, the uneven bars.
UCLA is no stranger to comebacks in gymnastics. Trailing Arizona State going into the last rotation at the 1997 NCAA Championships, UCLA needed to score a 49.25 to take first place. The Bruins proceeded to score a school record 49.525 to win its first-ever championship.
Teams competing in the 1998 Championships will be (in order of seed): Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Washington, Michigan, Utah, Brigham Young, Louisiana State, North Carolina State, UCLA, Arizona State and Penn State.
The first day of competition, Thursday, April 16, will be held in two sessions. Georgia, Alabama, Michigan, BYU, North Carolina State and Arizona State will compete in the first session at 1 pm. UCLA will compete at 7:30 pm along with Florida, Washington, Utah, LSU and Penn State. Those two sessions will consist of the team preliminaries and the individual all-around championship. The top three teams from each of Thursday's session will advance to the team finals Friday, April 17 at 7:30 pm. Individual event finals will be held Saturday, April 18 at 7:30 pm.
Said UCLA head coach Valorie Kondos, "Once again, the NCAA field represents the best collegiate gymnastics in the country. It is anybody's championship to win. Georgia is the favorite, but, as I said last year, if Georgia chooses to open the door, I feel we'll be right there to take the championship." The 1998 NCAA Championships will mark the first time since 1984 that UCLA has hosted this event. Also that year, Pauley Pavilion hosted the gymnastics competition of the Olympic Games.
Tickets for the championships are available at UCLA's Central Ticket Office, (310) UCLA-WIN.
All-session tickets are priced as follows:
$30 for adult reserved, $20 for student/youth under-16 reserved $22 for adult general admission $18 for student/youth under-16 general admission Single-session tickets for the NCAA Championships are: $10 for adult reserved $8 for student/youth under-16 reserved $8 adult general admission $6 for student/youth under-16 general admission