Clinging on to a narrow lead of 0.05 going into the final rotation, the UCLA gymnastics team needed six solid beam routines to secure a much-needed victory over Stanford. Three consecutive falls later, the Bruins were left shaking their heads wondering what had gone wrong.
With a season-low score of 47.825 during their final rotation, the No. 8 Bruins lost against the No. 2 Cardinal, whom they will face one more time this season on Feb. 11 in Chicago.
Injuries to junior Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs and sophomore Lichelle Wong left UCLA unexpectedly shorthanded, especially on balance beam, the apparatus that has given the Bruins trouble in nearly every meet this season.
Hopfner-Hibbs tweaked her neck on the last day of practice and did not fly with the team to Palo Alto. Wong, who competed on bars and vault earlier in the competition, was pulled from the lineup after her hand slipped on vault, causing her to hit her head during the fall.
Suddenly forced to replace two experienced beam workers, coach Valorie Kondos Field turned to senior Talia Kushynski and junior Tauny Frattone. Both were unable to maintain their balance, accounting for two of the three falls on the apparatus.
“We didn’t have anybody else,” Kondos Field said. “Talia has never competed on beam before, and Tauny has not performed for two weeks because she hurt her foot on a beam skill against Utah. We were so thin this meet, and they did really well when you consider that. I’m not trying to give any excuses for the score, but it does not reflect how we performed.”
With the number of available gymnasts greatly reduced, the remaining Bruins were forced to perform on more events, some of which were relatively unfamiliar. Senior Niki Tom made her season debut on vault, scoring a sub-par 9.475, while redshirt senior Brittani McCullough competed in only her third beam routine in two years.
“It’s certainly frustrating because you never want to see your teammates make mistakes,” said junior Aisha Gerber, whose 9.800 in beam led the team. “But you have to accept it. There is nothing you can really do about it except look forward and see what needs to be done to make the corrections.”
The Bruins’ inability to decrease the number of falls concerned Kondos Field, who believes that poor team warm-ups are contributing to mistakes during the meet.
“We need to warm up normally,” she said. “Our warm-ups are still not good, and when that happens, you try to compensate. You don’t need to do that. Train how you compete and compete how you train.”
The inability of the team to perform during competitions is apparent to not only Kondos Field.
“I think that we need to do a better job of translating what we do in the gym to the competition arena,” Gerber said. “We train like a great team. We have a lot of consistency and depth, but it just doesn’t seem to be quite connecting between practices and meet. But I know that it is something we can fix.”