The season is inching toward the national championship while the team is currently missing its key gymnasts – redshirt senior Samantha Peszek and redshirt sophomore Christine Peng-Peng Lee – in the lineup.
Both gymnasts have been important contributors of solid scores, often acting as anchors in the lineup. An ‘anchor’ refers to the last person of the lineup, who is one of the strongest gymnasts of the team. Therefore the team strategically places certain gymnasts toward the latter half of the lineup or as the anchor to boost the total score.
The No. 13 UCLA gymnastics team will take on No.16 Stanford this Saturday at 4 p.m. The Bruins are coming off a confidence boost from their last meet on Monday against the No. 17 Washington Huskies with a season-high total of 197.000. However, the team may be without its gymnasts in the lineup, due to injuries and a possible cold.
“(Lee) came down with a flu or virus so we don’t know if she is traveling,” said coach Valorie Kondos Field. “We also don’t have (Peszek) on floor so i think we are going to see some different people on the lineup this weekend.”
Although the team is missing some of its gymnasts on the lineup, it is not worried. Instead, UCLA looks to include new faces in the lineup.
“We have a lot of depth on the team,” said junior Sophina DeJesus. “We can rest people and have other people go in for them.”
Additionally, the team has been experimenting ways to combat pressure during competition.
“We are doing more pressure sets,” said freshman Hallie Mossett. “We are put in a pressure situation instead of just working for numbers.”
The ‘pressure sets’ are going through the motions of the actual competition in which the regular lineup will compete on each apparatus as if in a meet. Each gymnast will salute as if the judges are present, and the rest of the team members will cheer each other on just as in a competition.
Along with the emphasis on the competitive mode even during practice, the team focused again on the importance of details, which sometimes acts as the deal-breaker in gymnastics since one-tenth of a point could be the difference between a win or loss.
“I think (pressure sets) have been helping us in competition because we can just transfer from practice to competition.” DeJesus said. “We have been working on lot of details so hopefully it shows … details like landing, sticking (and) handstands.”
At this point of the season, Kondos Field said that the team knows and understands the importance of every little detail, which will contribute to the team’s goal of winning the national championship.
“We are at the stage now that every little half and quarter of tenth matters so we are really dissecting everything and not letting anything slip through the cracks,” Kondos Field said.
As for Stanford, the Cardinal was stopped short against No. 20 Cal Golden Bears, unable to take home its fifth consecutive win of the season last Sunday. In 2014, the Bruins defeated the Cardinal in a regular season meeting but dropped the second matchup at the Pac-12 Championships.
Although the team is missing its gymnasts form the lineup just before the mid-season road meet, the Bruins said that they are ready for another win.
“We haven’t taken our foot off the gas pedal at all,” Kondos Field said.