They aren’t hard to spot.
Dressed in their Sunday’s finest, which for them seems to
be old Halloween costumes and their little sisters’ work
clothes, approximately two dozen members of the UCLA football team
sit in the northwest corner of the Pauley Pavilion grandstands at
every Bruin gymnastics meet.
They certainly aren’t hard to hear either. A roar from
their section of the arena routinely overpowers the noise that the
rest of the crowd is able to muster.
And the gymnasts have more than welcomed the support of the
pigskin posse.
“We became really great friends over fall quarter, and
they got really excited about gymnastics,” freshman Lindsey
Vanden Eykel said. “So we told them to come out to the first
meet and now they keep coming back.”
Do they ever.
Not only do they come back for every home meet, or even an
occasional one on the road, but they come back louder, more
animated, more creative and more supportive with each passing
week.
This past Sunday’s triangular meet against Arizona and
Georgia was no exception. The Bruin football players filed into the
distinguished old gym and planted themselves in their typical
position at the start of the vault runway.
Freshman quarterback Pat Cowan wore a green-and-white Ladies
Foot Locker jersey, a Native American headdress full of war
feathers, and had a rainbow-colored parrot perched on his shoulder.
Running backs Maurice Drew and Chris Markey arrived clad in
matching superhero suits, complete with capes, masks and clip-on
bow ties above their bare chests. A group of other players
disguised themselves behind fake moustaches and glasses, and
sported shirts proclaiming themselves to be “male
groupies.”
And for two full hours, the football players displayed their
support for the Bruin gymnasts with surprising creativity.
They came prepared with megaphones, silly string, Chinese
yo-yos, penalty flags and even a makeshift score-review booth
allowing the “referees” to consult one another when a
questionable score was announced. They chanted
“Westwood” during the premeet introductions, a playful
reminder to the visitors that they were in Bruin territory. They
brandished prop feces in the faces of the Georgia and Arizona
gymnasts, who tried desperately to ignore the antics as they
prepared for the vault.
“We come out to support the gymnasts,” freshman
tailback Markey said. “I think it helps a lot. They keep
asking us to come back, so we must be helping out.”
While the UCLA gymnasts and coaches are thrilled to see the
football players each week, some of their opponents have had a more
tepid response.
“I’m all for the enjoyment,” Arizona
gymnastics coach Bill Ryden said. “The thing about them being
in the line of sight of beam is bordering on lack of respect.
It’s just that being at the end of an event like that is
distracting. We typically in gymnastics try to be more demure or
classy.”
UCLA coach Valorie Kondos Field, however, doesn’t seem to
be concerned. “Some other coaches feel they have been (too
enthusiastic),” she said. “But, you know what, go to
any other SEC (Southeastern Conference) school and this is what
it’s like, but with 10,000 people.”
So, with Kondos Field giving the green light, the football squad
has pledged to be there again on Sunday for UCLA’s final home
meet of the season, injecting some life into a traditionally
lukewarm fan base. Despite winning four of the last five NCAA
Championships, the UCLA gymnastics team averages roughly 2,000 fans
““ thousands less than its top competitors who regularly pack
10,000-seat gyms for big meets.
Attendance hasn’t increased because of the football
players. But the enthusiasm of the UCLA crowd has.
“They are our seventh man,” Kondos Field said.
“When you don’t pack Pauley Pavilion, at least the
enthusiasm needs to be good. The 20 of them can act like 500
people, and they often do.”
Even the Georgia gymnasts, who are accustomed to big crowds in
the gymnastics-crazed Southeastern Conference, were impressed by
the energy of the new cheering squad .
“The Georgia girls came up to me and said, “˜We wish
we had football players come to our meets like you
guys,'” Kondos Field said. “They get 10,000
people at their home meets, and they are telling me how great our
football players are.”
The football cheering squad does not account for the only
instance of Bruin athletes supporting their fellow athletes. The
UCLA men’s volleyball team has long been a supporter of both
women’s volleyball and men’s water polo at their
respective matches. And those teams, in return, show up to the
men’s volleyball games in what has become a sort of
triangular pact.
“It definitely brings a good vibe to any match,”
junior setter Dennis Gonzalez said of having athlete support.
“At our games, our regular crowds consist of older
people,” senior quick hitter Paul Johnson added. “But
when the student section and athletes come in and really get into
it, it fires everyone up and it really gets louder.”
Even so, UCLA’s football cheering squad brings an
originality to the gymnastics meets it attends that no other spirit
squad does.
“Our conference is pretty competitive as well, but we
don’t see quite the kind of spirit group UCLA has,”
Georgia assistant coach Doug McAvinn said. “Other schools
have different kinds of ways of showing it. They have a couple
people, but this is a unique group.”