It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish – just ask UCLA
senior gymnast Jeanette Antolin.
This year, Antolin experienced the greatest season of her UCLA
gymnastics career after capping off a third national championship
in her four years in Westwood.
However, it wasn’t always as easy as it appeared.
Looking at her accomplishments this season, it is hard to
believe that Antolin’s story consisted of pain and
disappointment.
But it did.
Coming into the 2001 season, UCLA was ecstatic to welcome
Antolin.
One of the nation’s most coveted recruits and a native of
nearby Huntington Beach, Antolin was eager to make the transition
to collegiate gymnastics and ready to make her mark on the
program.
But almost immediately after her arrival in Westwood,
Antolin’s relationship with UCLA turned sour.
Her late-night party habits and deteriorating grades were cause
for concern.
“Coming into college I’d been sheltered so
much,” Antolin said. “I just wanted to have fun, so I
was going out four nights a week.
“I let my priorities slip, and I wasn’t doing what I
had been recruited to do.”
Seeing Antolin’s commitment to the team waning, gymnastics
coach Valorie Kondos Field, who is affectionately called “Ms.
Val,” was left with no other choice but to kick the freshman
off the team.
Disheartened, Antolin was forced to move on and temporarily
pursue other areas of interest.
It wasn’t long after that she realized what she had lost.
Only then did Antolin’s perspective on life change.
“I didn’t realize what I had, and I decided to
re-commit my life,” Antolin said. “My priorities
changed.”
During this time of transition, Antolin’s former teammates
still kept in touch with her and noticed a change in her
attitude.
The newfound attitude was enough to prompt a meeting where the
team decided to ask Kondos Field to allow Antolin back on the
team.
“Jamie (Dantzscher) met with Ms. Val and started arguing
why I should be allowed back on the team, while Ms. Val argued why
I shouldn’t,” Antolin recalled.
“Eventually, Ms. Val ran out of arguments and Jamie kept
going.”
Midway through the 2001 season, UCLA reinstated Antolin.
“(That period) changed her life,” Kondos Field said.
“It changed the way she approached everything.”
“If I hadn’t gone through everything I went through,
I wouldn’t have learned everything I know now,” Antolin
said.
It is those lessons from her freshman year that formed the
foundation that Antolin stood on to take the reigns of the
gymnastics team this season.
“Ms. Val came up to me and said, “˜You know you have
to be the leader of this team, right?,'” Antolin
said.
With a squad full of inexperienced freshmen this past season,
Antolin was looked to as the team’s leader and committed
herself to making UCLA a championship contender once again.
“She was tough with some and nurturing with others, and
was a huge part of our success emotionally and
competitively,” Kondos Field said.
“I think I taught people about themselves,” Antolin
added.
Her leadership even had a tangible effect on former Olympian and
teammate Kate Richardson.
“She taught me so much about mental toughness,”
Richardson said. “She’s the epitome of mental toughness
and a great leader.”
Aside from establishing herself as the leader of the team,
Antolin also took her final year as an opportunity to unleash the
potential everyone knew she had within her.
Meet after meet, Antolin outperformed the competition, staking a
place near or at the top of the leaderboard each time.
“She was our rock in every single competition,” said
Richardson. “We were always 100 percent sure that she would
hit (her routine).”
By season’s end, Antolin had successfully performed all 59
of her routines, while setting a UCLA single-season record with 11
perfect scores.
Her performance earned her the accolades of Pac-10 Gymnast of
the Year, First Team All-America and SI on Campus Gymnast of the
Year.
“This season was surreal,” Antolin said.
Despite all of Antolin’s personal accomplishments this
year, she’s proudest of the relationship she has forged with
her teammates.
“I’m proud of the team and how we came
together,” Antolin said.
“There will never be another team like us, and I’m
glad I got to end my career with this team.”
From early trials and tribulations to final grandeur, it has
been a true Cinderella story for Jeanette Antolin. Once given up
on, she proved herself to be the jewel of this year’s
championship team.
“It was like a puzzle that needed one last piece, and I
found it,” Antolin said.
A slipper, perhaps.