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.
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March 24, 2004
If you could determine a team's performance by the final score, our last two competitions would be great fodder for some insightful analytical / philosophical coffee house chats. Two weeks ago we won by .025. This past weekend we lost by .025. Don't you just love the irony in that?
I've always believed that it is important to measure our success by our own standards and not by the final scores, whether we win or lose. I remember last year in one of our regular season competitions, we had 6 falls on floor. SIX FALLS ON FLOOR! And, we actually still won the meet. I was happy to see that our team felt no honor in that win and were the first to congratulate the other team on the fact that they had in fact truly won that competition.
After our meet in Florida, but before our team found out that we had won by .025, our team identified what we still needed to work on and were discussing how to accomplish it in the next few weeks. After our last event at the Pac-10 Championships, where we lost by .025, once again, our team was discussing the highlights of our competition and what we still needed to work on. Again, they did this before they heard the final score. I like this. I like the fact that our athletes measure their team performance by their standards versus where they stand on the awards stand. This in no way erases the sour feelings of "losing" - but it is the key to keeping everything in perspective.
In looking over our Pac-10 performance, the facts that stand out most clearly to me are that our top bar and beam performers both had uncharacteristic falls, while the team members we are looking to continue to improve in order for us to go into nationals confidently, stepped it up. Jamie and Kate will only emerge stronger from their falls, while Lori Winn, Ashley Peckett and Christie Tedmon all took another step toward the "zone" we call "Calm - Confidence".
We're off to Raleigh, NC next week for Regionals. Although we will be traveling a long distance, it will be nice to see a beautiful part of the country we've never seen before. We welcome any Bruins on the East Coast that would like to sit with our fans in the Bruin Den. Come on, Maloneys! It's only a hop, skip and a jump from Pen Argyl!
~miss val