The UCLA gymnastics team knew it had to be nearly perfect to advance to the NCAA Super Six Team Finals last weekend, but it found out how difficult perfection is to achieve.
Despite one of their best collective performances of the season, the Bruins suffered from several mistakes and were barely edged out of a spot in the finals.
In the ultra-competitive evening session of the NCAA Championship Preliminaries, UCLA scored a 196.725, only 0.175 away from third place.
UCLA’s fourth-place finish in the preliminaries crushed its dreams of a national championship.
“This team has so much heart, and they are such great competitors, but they are definitely disappointed because the only thing that would satisfy them is winning the national championship,” coach Valerie Kondos Field said.
UCLA received a very difficult draw in competing in the evening session, and their score would have easily qualified them for the Super Six if they had competed in the earlier session.
The Bruins were edged out by Georgia, Utah and Stanford, which also placed first, second and third overall, respectively, in the Finals.
But the Bruins realized their competitors would be tough and made no excuses for their tough draw.
“It was definitely disappointing not to make it into the Super Six, but we competed our hardest and gave it everything we had,” junior Kristina Comforte said. “We were in an extremely tough session, and all the teams were phenomenal, but we have no regrets. I cannot be more proud of this team because we did the best we could.”
At such a high level of competition, one mistake can significantly hurt a team’s chances of advancing.
The Bruins suffered that mistake on the balance beam.
Jordan Schwikert was forced to wait six minutes while the judges conferred about their differing scores for the previous routine, and six minutes of waiting to compete can seem like hours.
Schwikert, who has been one of the more consistent beam performers all season, suffered a fall, earning her routine only a 9.0. Combined with another low score on beam, the small mistakes ended up making the difference between advancing to the finals and going home.
“It really breaks my heart that Jordan fell and that she has to finish her beam career like that because she has always stepped in and done well for us,” Kondos Field said. “Balance beam is the make-or-break event in gymnastics, and standing around makes the gymnast tighten up, and when they are tight, it is easy to fall off a beam that is only four inches wide.
“I’m impressed with how well we hung in there with a fall like that because that tells us the depth and strength of the team, but the fall was barely enough to take us out of moving on to the Super Six.”
The Bruins hung in there and almost pulled out a third-place finish, but in the end, their best efforts simply weren’t good enough.
Even with a phenomenal performance from Tasha Schwikert, who captured the NCAA all-around title for the second time in her career, and great contributions from every gymnast, the season ended without a national championship.
“It’s clear that we are very competitive with any other team in the country, but some things didn’t go our way, and we were dealt some hard cards and had some mistakes,” Tasha Schwikert said. “It was so close even after Jordan fell, and our team did not give up or let down one bit, but we couldn’t seem to put it all together at the right time.”