Weekly diary by Valorie Kondos Field, head coach for UCLA's women's gymnastics team.
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Febraury 2, 2004
Super Bowl Sunday proved to be a great day for UCLA Gymnastics, as well as for the New England Patriots. Although, all you Patriot fans have to admit, the Panthers had you scared the last few minutes of the game! Starting off with that brilliant touchdown run by our very own DeShaun Foster. Come on now ... give it up a little.
Well, Pauley Pavilion had quite a bit of excitement of its own going on yesterday afternoon. Our UCLA Gymnastics team hit its second-highest score of the season with a 197.55. Kate Richardson earned back to back 10.0's on the beam and floor. Our pre- meet and post-meet entertainment of the World Champion Men's Rhythmic Gymnastics team from Japan brought the crowd to its feet both times they performed. And our crowd was extremely energetic with Bruin pride, including our head football coach, Karl Dorrell, and his family. The one thing I couldn't understand was that Coach Dorrell's wife, Kim, used to be a high-level gymnast at Desert Devils in Arizona. She was at our meet with Coach Dorrell, and yet my husband seemed to be the one giving Coach Dorrell the play-by-play of the meet. I would have loved to have heard that commentary, especially when Kristen Maloney did her full-twisting swing down on the beam. How do you put that one into football terms ... besides "ouch"?
From a team perspective, while we did put out a great team effort, we certainly still have room to improve. We're looking forward to meeting Stanford this coming Sunday in Pauley. That will certainly be a great meet filled with incredible gymnastics.
See you there. In the meantime remember, it's all in the " grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr".
~miss val