Junior Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs scored a 9.950 to take first place in floor exercise Sunday at the Pac-10 Showcase at Pauley Pavilion.
After watching UCLA and six other gymnastics teams compete for nearly two and a half hours, all that the roaring fans at Pauley Pavilion wanted was to see a little dancing.
The Bruins delivered with six crowd-pleasing routines, highlighted by junior Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs’ first-place finish in floor exercise, to close the first Pac-10 Gymnastics Showcase with flair. But despite posting the best team score in floor, two falls on balance beam prevented No. 1 UCLA overtaking No. 6 Stanford in the final rotation. The Bruins placed second behind the Cardinal, scoring a 195.925.
“We all love competing floor, especially at home meets, so there was no extra pressure,” said Hopfner-Hibbs, who scored a meet-winning 39.550 in the all-around.
The team’s loss to Stanford was its second to a top-10 team in three days after falling to No. 5 Utah on Friday, 195.7-195.3. Trailing the Cardinal by 0.50 in the first two rotations, two falls on balance beam destroyed any chance of a comeback.
Despite the Bruins’ balance beam woes, coach Valorie Kondos Field maintained that it was too early in the season to be worried.
“It’s really early in the season so we have time,” Hopfner-Hibbs said.
“There are tons of girls ready to compete on beam so right now we are just putting different people in and seeing how they do. We can always change the lineup if we need to later.”
UCLA scored more than 49 points in three of four rotations, an improvement from Friday’s meet where the Bruins approached that mark once.
“The thing that has pleased me most about this team is that nothing gets them down because they are fighters,” Kondos Field said. “I saw improvement just in the little details. They are finding their feet on the floor and the angles for their tumbling. They are figuring it out. I know we can get better. We have got a lot of athletes who can score a 9.7 or 9.8, but I believe that they are capable of going 9.9 and 9.95.”
After facing the hostile environment of Utah on Friday, the friendly fans at Pauley Pavilion were a welcome change for freshman Sydney Sawa, who scored a 9.9 on uneven bars.
“The home crowd made it easier to compete and not as nerve-racking,” she said. “Knowing that people were cheering for us made me feel less nervous.”