University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics
UCLA Official Athletic Site - Women's Gymnastics
Weekly diary by Valorie Kondos Field, head coach for UCLA's women's gymnastics team.
 | |
 | |
|
| |
Note: With three NCAA titles in six 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 seven years alone, Kondos Field has led UCLA to three NCAA titles and one runner-up finish, six Regional titles and four Pac-10 championships.
January 3, 2003
Opening our season in Hawaii … it's been a tremendous week. We've had very hard and productive training sessions these past few days over here in Oahu. My biggest fear was the challenge of coming to this beautiful island for an extended period of time, where life is a bit slower and laid-back, and not being able to keep our team focused on the job they came to do, which was to open our 2003 season with confidence and conviction.
Our team has done a great job keeping their goals in focus. We trained hard this pre-season to be able to start our season a week earlier than we normally do. In fact, I felt it necessary to be more prepared than we were at this time last year, considering we got off to a rather slow start last season. Not only am I extremely pleased that our team is ready to compete and hit their routines, but I was most impressed with their confidence, support of each other, and importance they placed on this meet in Paradise.
We competed well enough to open our season this evening with a 197.6, the highest score we've ever earned on an opening night. Our meet was against Oregon State, and both teams competed extremely well with room for improvement. We counted a fall on beam, and Oregon State counted two.
Interestingly enough, if you were to ask anyone in our travel party what the highlight of our trip has been, they wouldn't say competing well, nor would they say being able to be over here in Hawaii. It's been interesting that everyone in our travel party, from student-athlete to coach to training staff, has commented on the "richness" of our trip due to our extended Bruin family that joined us this week. To start with, Chris Waller's wife, Cindy, and their two adorable daughters made the trip. Their daughters have brought a light to this week that only adorable children can bring. We also have had the company of Malia Jones' parents and our dear adopted grandparents who join us for every home and away meet, Pat and Harry Frum. To round out the different generations, our dear friend, Jan Macauley, who graduated from UCLA in 1936, decided to join us. Having a Bruin family on this trip, replete with every generation, has made our trip so much more rich and special than it would have been had they not come. You can imagine how great it makes me feel that every one of our team members has felt this and commented on it at some point this week.
We go from tank tops and shorts this week to warm-ups and mittens next week. We're off to Utah next Thursday ... For now, I know we'll all continue to enjoy the few hours of the remainder of our trip and the people that have made it so special.
- Aloha