Looking to surge past Stanford during its third rotation, the UCLA gymnastics team needed a big routine on floor exercise from junior Tauny Frattone.
She delivered with a high-energy tumbling pass that was a little too much for the blue spring mat to handle, sending Frattone stumbling out of bounds with a significant deduction.
Frattone wasn’t the only Bruin whose overly enthusiastic floor routine led to a sub-par score on Friday. Junior Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs and redshirt senior Brittani McCullough earned disappointing marks of 9.600 and 9.575 as UCLA placed third behind Stanford and Oregon State at the IGI/Chicago Style Invitational.
The defeat marked the No. 10 Bruins’ (6-6) third consecutive loss to the No. 2 Cardinal (13-0) this season and their first to No. 6 Oregon State (10-5).
UCLA’s meltdown on floor stemmed from the team’s inability to adapt to a spring mat that had a little more bounce in it than expected.
“It’s just ridiculous for (Frattone), (Hopfner-Hibbs) and (McCullough) to literally go flying out of bounds,” coach Valorie Kondos Field said.
“The floors always differ at different meets and you have to adjust your technique. … They did not make the technical adjustments they needed to make.”
Despite the frustrating performances on floor, Kondos Field did appreciate the fearlessness shown by the team on Friday. As opposed to the restraint displayed in previous meets, the Bruins lost because they tried too hard.
“Something that we did very well was that we didn’t hold back,” said junior Aisha Gerber, echoing the thoughts of her coach. “Yes, we made mistakes, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. We went big and so we over-rotated a lot.”
The uncharacteristic struggles on floor have troubled the gymnasts, who remain adamant that in the gym they look like an entirely different team.
“Its not just about how we are training because we are a great team in practice,” Gerber said. “There will definitely be some conversations and team meeting in the weeks to come to try and figure out what to do next.”
UCLA showed flashes of this practice potential in Friday’s meet, tallying a season-high score of 49.200 on vault, the team’s final rotation of the competition. The Bruins also matched their season best of 49.275 on bars, led by 9.900s from Hopfner-Hibbs and freshman Samantha Peszek.
After fracturing her foot in early January, Peszek made her much-awaited debut as a Bruin with a successful uneven bars routine. Although it is uncertain when she will be able to perform on other events, Kondos Field believes Peszek will start competing on vault earlier than balance beam.
Friday’s meet concluded a month-and-a-half long road trip for UCLA, which will finally return to Pauley Pavilion next Monday against North Carolina State. The competition will also be the first in four meets that the Bruins have not faced either Stanford or Oregon State.
For Kondos Field, the change in competition makes no difference because all the Bruins really want to focus on is improving their team.
“We are always competing against ourselves,” she said. “We are beating ourselves up every single competition because we need to come out and hit 24-for-24 routines. We need to hit four events solidly. That’s what we really need to do these next three weeks.”