In a sport centered on perfection, the UCLA gymnastics team hopes to have found the perfect balance of strong returning upperclassmen and talented new freshmen necessary to bring home an NCAA Championship.
But the team’s balance has already suffered a blow.
As team members prepare for their first meet of the season on Friday against Utah, senior Kristina Comforte has been forced to retire from the sport because of a labrum tear in her left shoulder.
And while the exit of Comforte will hurt the team, she will not be going far. Comforte is now the undergraduate assistant coach.
“This obviously isn’t how I wanted my last year of gymnastics to play out, but I am excited to take on a new role,” Comforte said. “More than anything, I want to be there for my team and help lead them to a successful season in any way I can.”
Though the Bruins are down one returning gymnast, they have gained eight valuable freshmen, including Olympian Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs.
“Before it was individual, and now it’s team everywhere,” Hopfner-Hibbs said. “It’s all about the team.”
Apart from adjusting to everything that a typical freshmen must adjust to ““ classes, dorms and roommates ““ freshmen gymnasts also have to adjust to a completely new way of competing.
Up until the college level, gymnasts work individually. So the concept of teamwork is especially important for freshmen to learn. In learning about teamwork, they focus on the fact that individual mistakes can be costly for the entire team.
“It’s important for the freshmen to understand that especially if they make a mistake, they can’t get upset about that,” coach Valorie Kondos Field said. “They have to put that behind them and finish their routines with as much confidence and poise as when they first started. Every breath and the smallest of wobbles can determine a national championship.”
And after being nudged out of The Super Six Team Finals last year by a mere 0.175 points and ultimately finishing the season in seventh place, the reality of small mistakes is all too real to this 2009 team.
In fact, it’s something the Bruins have worked hard to eliminate from their performance this season.
“We went home for a total of 10 days over winter break,” senior Melissa Chan said. “We spent a lot of time working out at the gym, and we’ve been mentally preparing, going over routines together, going over individual skills, and we’re just healthier overall than we were last year.”
Apart from working on themselves as gymnasts, the girls also used winter break to train together as a team and build tighter bonds.
“This is the most cohesive team we’ve had in 15 years,” Field said. “Consequently, our training has been much more intense and that much more fun because it’s rare to have a training day in this gym when they aren’t ignited. We feel it almost every day.”
Gymnasts say it’s that intensity that the girls will be able to utilize to continue to strive under the guidance of their new assistant coach, Comforte. And it’s Field’s hope that the girls will be able to deal with any situation that comes their way.
“Our goal is to position ourselves to get to be able to win the national championship,” Field said. “Along the way, what our hope is is that the girls reach a feeling of calm confidence. Our goal is to prepare them well enough that the girls can distinguish between anxiety and excitement and enthusiasm. So when we get on the floor in Utah, which will be in front of 10,000 people, that they will be able to feel excitement but also calm.”