March 24, 2011
UCLA Gymnastics head coach Valorie Kondos Field will be answering your questions every Thursday over the course of the season. To submit questions for future Q&As, CLICK HERE.
(Due to our travel schedule, next week's Q&A will be posted earlier in the week, so get questions in over the weekend.)
Laura (LA): May we see a video of you choreographing a routine? It would be intriguing.
Miss Val: I've been asked that before. I guess we can do that next year. I don't know how interesting it would be, but it wouldn't take much to film the process. Whose routine would you like to see?
Michael (Santa Monica): Who is the stunningly gorgeous blond gentleman down the floor with the team, and what role does he have for the team? He seems so sweet. I admit I have a crush :)
Miss Val: He is Cory Tomlinson, the son of our past head coach, Jerry Tomlinson. Cory is as nice and as fun as he is good-looking. He volunteers to help out with running our home meets.
Gilbert (San Francisco, CA): At this point in the season do the athletes still get really sore? Or are they pretty much used to everything by now?
Miss Val: No the athletes aren't getting very sore these days. The only time they do is if we add new conditioning skills and we've learned not to do that this time of the season.
Eduardo (Monterrey, Mexico): Is Tauny working on a 2nd vault? That vault is a shoo-in for vault finals this year. Can she do any 2 vaults or do they have to be different families?
Miss Val: Yes, Tauny is working on a half on, tuck half off. It's not ready to compete, but it's looking good.
Lenka (Amsterdam, Holland): I love Brittani!! How does she keep up her endurance when she practices so little. Does she do cardio on her own? When does she sleep?!
Miss Val: I think Brittani's schedule caught up to her this season. She slowly made more and more little mistakes. Luckily, she's pretty healthy going into the last 4 weeks of the season, and she is FINALLY finished with her clinics. She only has one class to complete this quarter. I'm glad for her that she'll be able to fully enjoy the last 4 weeks of her gymnastics career without being as tired, and we fully expect her to be able to clean up her gymnastics technique that has slipped a bit this past quarter.
Ashley (London, England): What are workouts going to be like during Spring Break for the girls?
Miss Val: We're in Spring Break now. Training has been hard but fun. Yesterday we told the team that they could design and run Thursday's training. They designed an intrasquad with goals that were a bit more of a challenge for them to achieve than we would have given them. They did well, and I think they were able to keep their team energy up a bit more because they were totally in charge of their day.
Hannah (Boston, MA): Hello! I love UCLA! Who do you think on the team is the most fun to work with? Good Luck the rest of your season!
Miss Val: I really can't say who is the "most" fun; on any given day any one of them could take the lead with that response. The one who is the most different than we thought she'd be is Sam. She is extremely coach-able, a total team player, and a real easy target when we need someone to rib for some comic relief. The surprising part is that she is an exceptionally good sport about it. She has a very strong sense of herself and is confident without being egotistical.
Jen (Chicago): When articles are posted on the UCLA Gymnastics website, a picture of one of the gymnasts is usually shown. I always admire how great the pictures are! Is there a website were fans can look at pictures from meets and/or practice?
Miss Val: Yes, we have photo galleries for some of our meets on our website, with more to be added in the near future. You can look here.