Weekly diary by Valorie Kondos Field, head coach for UCLA's women's gymnastics team.
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Note: With three NCAA titles in five years, UCLA head coach Valorie Kondos Field has positioned her Bruins as the premier program in collegiate gymnastics. Not only has she consistently recruited the top talent in the world, but she has produced the results. In the past six years alone, Kondos Field has led UCLA to three NCAA titles and one runner-up finish, five Regional titles and three Pac-10 championships.
Feb. 18, 2002
Jamie Williams … we call her "J. Dub."
Jamie Williams was recruited by quite a few universities for a scholarship position and decided to walk-on to our team last year. During the recruiting process, I explained to her that she would compete a lot more if she accepted a position at one of the other schools that was recruiting her. Jamie's response was that she wanted to be a part of all that is involved with a program that is one of the best in the country.
Jamie joined our team last year with the greatest recruiting class in the history of NCAA gymnastics. Among her freshmen classmates were 2000 U.S. Olympians Kristen Maloney, Jamie Dantzscher and Alyssa Beckerman and two-time Canadian Olympian Yvonne Tousek.
When asked about how she felt training with some of the best gymnasts in the world, Jamie told of starting fall training, doing beam drills and looking up and seeing "Kristen Maloney" on the same beam as she was. She was star-struck, but it only took a few days of training with Kristen and hanging out with her after gym before Jamie saw the two-time USA Champion and 2000 Olympian just as her friend "Maloney". This little story took on even more meaning when we visited her home in Arizona after a meet and saw pictures and posters all over her room of these same great gymnasts who were now her teammates and friends.
The sad part about this J.Dub saga is that because Jamie was surrounded with greater athletic talent than she'd ever dreamed of, she became petrified when put into the competition line-up. You could literally see her body petrifying, her blood flow stopping, her eyes stop blinking. She was petrified that she would let her team down by not hitting her routines.
This built all last season to a breaking point where Jamie needed to either bust through the fear or continue to feel suffocated by it.
J. Dub chose to bust through and has continued to do so a little more with every meet she has competed in this year. Three weeks ago she had to come in for Kristin Parker on floor, and for the first time in her Bruin career, competed as she trained, hitting all three tumbling passes. Two weeks ago in Pauley Pavilion, she came in on vault and floor, again hitting her routines and competing to the best of her ability. Yesterday at Cal-Berkeley, our entire team was buzzing with the fact that J. Dub hit three-for-three events.
Imagine the significance on the rest of Jamie's life because she made the conscious decision to face her fear and bust clear through it.