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. 25, 2002
"CHARGE THE HILL AND PLANT THE FLAG!"
That has been our motto for the past few years. It's fair to say that this season the "charge" has been more of a "warm-up", slow "gear shift", down shift, make sure everything is up and running before we shift into overdrive.
I'm happy to report that we seem to be "shifting" on schedule. It's been a great season to compete our entire line-up. Along with giving everyone an opportunity to compete, this has helped keep our excitement for each meet at a peak. The team has greatly enjoyed watching different teammates step up in their blue and gold and compete with Bruin Pride.
We recorded our highest score of the season this past weekend, and we're still not competing at full strength. Kristin Parker came into the line-up on vault after a four week hiatus from competition. Jeanette Antolin is still testing the waters in competition - her warm-up and training vaults are much better than those she's competed … that's O.K. - no hurry! And, our "guns" are starting to feel their competitive rhythm. FYI: this is the 6th-straight perfect 10.0 on floor that Jamie Dantzscher has posted (We believe this to be a national record).
This coming weekend we have our last two-meet weekend. We go to Washington on Friday, where we plan to compete everyone on our team again, and then we're in Pauley Pavilion for our last home meet this season on Sunday at 2:00pm against Michigan, Minnesota, and Fullerton.
For those of you who are planning on attending our last meet or "thinking" about it - here's a little enticement … we will have a distinguished guest who will be attending his first gymnastics meet ever. You're not going to want to miss this!