Either they let it slip away or it was taken away from them.
Any way you look at it, the members of the No. 2 UCLA gymnastics
team (10-3) suffered an upset at the hands of No. 8 Georgia (11-4).
The Bruins finished second in a tri-meet, which also included No.
17 Arizona (10-7), on Sunday at Pauley Pavilion.
And it was in the meet’s third rotation, when UCLA was on
the beam, that it took a drastic turn. While the Bruins appeared on
their way to an easy victory over their competitors, the beam
judges had other plans.
Having amassed high marks in its previous two rotations, UCLA
produced low scores on the beam, despite any significant errors.
Sophomore Ashley Peckett started the rotation with a solid
performance that earned a 9.5. The next two performances
didn’t crack 9.675, and when the rotation was over, the
highest score was Bruin senior Kristen Maloney’s mark of
9.825.
“We’re a subjective sport,” UCLA coach Valorie
Kondos Field said. “The judges judge based on what they
see.
“It’s fair to say that all three coaches at the meet
were confused with the scores,” she said.
The gymnasts shared those sentiments.
“There weren’t any major problems on the beam
really,” Peckett said. “I don’t know what
happened.”
After getting off to a strong start, the way the meet ended
threw the Bruins off guard.
Opening the meet on vault, UCLA gymnasts progressively increased
their scores during the team’s six performances on the
apparatus. Starting with senior Christie Tedmon’s 9.7, the
Bruins would end the rotation on Maloney’s 9.925. After the
first rotation, UCLA had built a comfortable half-point lead over
second-place Arizona.
Moving to the bars for the second rotation, UCLA found continued
success. Maloney’s strong score of 9.9 was followed by
freshman Tasha Schwikert’s 9.950, which was the highest mark
of the night for any performance. By the end of the second
rotation, UCLA still found itself in first place with a .6 lead
over second-place Georgia.
But with UCLA scores plummeting during the third rotation,
Georgia took advantage, posting a high vault score of 49.325 to
UCLA’s 48.375 on the beam. After leading comfortably through
half of the meet, the Bruins found themselves facing a .35 deficit
with one rotation left.
UCLA took to the floor, hoping to score well enough to pull out
the win. Unfortunately for the Bruins, their first four
performances failed to break the 9.775 mark. While Maloney and
Tasha Schwikert finished the rotation with 9.9 and 9.95
respectively, the Bruins had already fallen out of contention as
Georgia won the meet with a score of 196.5 to UCLA’s 196.1
and Arizona’s 193.625.
Despite losing the meet in a questionable fashion, the Bruins
were still pleased with what they had done.
“I was really pleased with our performance,” Kondos
Field said. “We didn’t hold back and we were
gutsy.”
“It was disappointing to lose,” Peckett said.
“Still, we don’t have any regrets because overall we
did well.”