W. gym poised for first NCAA championship
UCLA qualifies for its third-straight "Super Six" appearance;
Umeh finishes third in all-around
By Esther Hui
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
ATHENS, Georgia  It was a night of both expectations met
and unfulfilled in the first round of the NCAA women’s gymnastics
championships.
UCLA scored a 196.375 to win the evening session and catapult
the Bruins into their third straight "Super Six" appearance. The
University of Kentucky’s Jenny Hansen won an unprecedented third
straight all-around title with an NCAA record of 39.8, and she
scored her seventeenth perfect 10.0 on the vault. UCLA freshman
Stella Umeh placed third in the all-around with a 39.40 and made
event finals in bars, beam and floor.
UCLA senior Kareema Marrow fell from the beam, ending her dreams
of an all-around championship, though she made event finals on bars
and floor. Bruin senior Megan Fenton competed bars for the first
time in six weeks in hopes of making the finals in her last season,
but over-rotated her dismount and fell. 1995 Pac-10 Gymnast of the
Year Leah Homma had to withdraw from two events due to an ankle and
calf injury and will probably only compete in two events of the
team finals tonight as well.
"I was very pleased," UCLA head coach Valorie Kondos said. "We
were going through a lot of adversity with our top all-arounder
(Homma) not able to compete. You stop and wonder if you’re going to
be able to do it. In the past, if one bad thing happened,
everything plummeted, but this year, they knew that the team was
the one goal."
The afternoon session was slated to be the competition of the
year, as No. 1 Georgia, No. 3 Utah, No. 5 Michigan and No. 7
Louisiana were to fight it out in the preliminary round of the NCAA
team competition for the three qualification spots to the Super Six
team final. The evening session, on the other hand, was supposed to
be a cut and dry formality round for qualification by No. 2
Alabama, No. 4 UCLA and No. 6 Florida.
What happened, however, is another story. In the first round,
the heavily favored Bulldogs set the mark to be matched with a
196.825, with Michigan placing second with 195.700, Utah third with
a 195.325 and Louisiana State finishing so far behind as not to be
a factor.
In the evening competition, UCLA overtook the favored Alabama
from the beginning, scoring the highest bars total on the first
event with a 49.150 out of 50 points. Three Bruins made event
finals, with Homma sticking a solid double layout dismount to
qualify with a 9.925. Umeh threw two reverse hechts for a 9.850,
and Marrow swung two quick giants to a double layout for a
9.875.
After a shaky beam set, UCLA tumbled and danced almost perfectly
on floor to solidify its lead. The Bruins gained momentum after
UCLA’s lead-off athlete Corinne Chi hit her first double pike pass
for the first time this year. Five of the six gymnasts earned their
highest floor score of the year.
Alabama finished second with a 195.60 and Oregon State
eventually beat out Florida for the last spot, 195.50 to 195.425 in
an unexpectedly close team competition.
The meet’s individual event finals will be Saturday night. The
Bruins will compete for their first-ever team national championship
tonight against Georgia, reminiscent of the 1989 NCAA Championships
in Athens in which the Bulldogs prevailed by five hundredths of a
point.