UCLA gymnastics will be playing for a spot in the NCAA championship in the upcoming regional at Ohio State University’s St. John Arena on April 4.
On March 21, No. 7 UCLA placed second at the Pac-12 gymnastics championship with a total score of 197.350, behind No. 3 Utah’s score of 198.150. Despite a fall and other technical mistakes throughout the meet, the Bruins yielded their second-highest score of the season.
“I knew that my team had my back,” said redshirt sophomore Christine Peng-Peng Lee, who fell on the uneven bars in the first rotation. “We stress about that a lot – that if we have a mistake someone else can make up for it. We definitely fought throughout the whole meet.”
Although Lee’s fall did not hurt the team’s overall score because of her teammates’ consistent scores of 9.80 or better, the Bruins missed their chance for a score that could have competed more closely with the powerhouse Utes’.
However, as the NCAA championship nears, the team is mixing a good amount of rest and training: taking a week off but coming back to sharpen the fundamentals.
“We had a bye week of competition,” said associate coach Chris Waller. “We took that week to go back to fundamentals and to refine some skills instead of just driving back into routine, routine, routine.”
The fundamentals refer to the main components of gymnastics, such as the positions of the gymnasts’ bodies, arms and heads when flipping in the air as well as how well they are landing.
The team also adjusted their amount of practice, keeping practices light in terms of either volume or length but still turning up the mental intensity and concentration.
“The volume went up last week, because we had the opportunity to gain some strength and explosiveness,” Waller said. “And this week, intensity went up but volume went down, (which is) the number of repetitions, but the focus and intensity went up.”
Saturday’s regional will hold six teams, but since there are only four apparatuses – vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor – there will be two byes within the meet. This means each team will have about two sets of 30-minute rest periods in which it will not compete.
To overcome the different competition setting, which might lead to a potential loss of focus, UCLA has devised its own method for keeping each gymnast energetic and concentrated on the competition.
“We normally play games during a bye, so it keeps energy up,” Lee said. “We love playing games, so we all really get into it.”
Another key factor that the team is trying to accentuate is its landings.
“The No. 1 thing in the end is how good our landings are. If we can stick more landings, we are going to have a bigger score,” Waller said. “That’s what it comes down to.”
One of UCLA’s top competitors – redshirt senior Samantha Peszek – said that although UCLA is coming off one of its best performances of the season, the team still has more to show off than what it already has.
“This weekend will be a good time to put our full potential on the floor,” Peszek said.
So after the season-long preparation and progress, the team heads into the regional Saturday and makes the first step toward the NCAA championship.
“We really feel like we took advantage of the last two weeks. We feel like we are better than we were a couple weeks ago,” Waller said. “It’s another opportunity to get better and to work.”