With only two home meets left in the regular season and its toughest stretch behind them, UCLA gymnastics is in late-season form. Aside from a hiccup in the Bruins’ lone tri-meet, their last four competitions have borne the highest team scores of the season.
Even so, coach Valorie Kondos Field believes the team needs to revisit the fundamentals.
“It’s nice now, having those three meets in seven days behind us, so we can get back to the basics,” Kondos Field said. “That’s what’s going to help us make our scoring consistent, because they are consistent with their mental game.”
On Sunday, No. 4 UCLA (7-2, 4-1 Pac-12) welcomes No. 19 Cal (6-2, 3-2) for a pivotal late-season matchup. The Bruins posted their second-best team score of the season over the weekend with a 197.725 and look to replicate the consistency in that performance.
[Related: Gymnastics posts second-highest season score in victory against Arizona]
One key element will be the mental game.
“It starts before the meet – getting in the zone, getting pumped up,” said senior Angi Cipra. “It’s meet day – you have to be able to flip the switch.”
Cipra added that the Pauley Pavilion crowd helps get the team energized and ready to go for the meets.
As the large gap between the Bruins’ average 49.175 performance on vault and their season-high 49.625 floor exercise performance last week against Arizona showed, the gymnasts’ mindsets helped play a part.
More than once this season, Kondos Field has stressed the importance of not falling prey to shooting for perfection.
“(We have) to make sure (we’re) not just focusing on a score, or sticking the landings,” Kondos Field said. “On vault, if you only focus on sticking, you’re not going to do a big vault. On bars or beam or floor, if you only focus on getting that 10, you’re going to cut things short, so they’ve got to not focus on that. In the gym, they don’t focus on that. They focus on technique. In competition, they want that 10 and that makes them play tight.”
[Related: Gymnastics teeters but wins tri-meet against Bridgeport and Utah State]
Another factor for the later part of the season revolves around the seniors. Only two more home meets remain in their UCLA careers.
“I’m struggling with the fact that there’s only two left,” Cipra said. “Two left for me, anyway. It’s my senior year. I’m excited, but it’s a combination of emotions and feelings.”
Thoughts about the season’s aftermath are already creeping into their minds.
“It’s weird because you’ve been doing it so long,” said redshirt senior Peng-Peng Lee. “The transition is very different, but I’m really trying to embrace all the girls and who I’m around, and try to embrace every single moment. I’m soaking it all in.”
A job, however, remains to be finished. Cal’s recent form, which hovers around the high-196 to 197 range, will challenge UCLA to show that it has moved beyond the stumbling performances that landed the Bruins in the 195s early in the season.
On Sunday, the week’s training has to bear fruit on the scoresheet.
“If you can hit routines in the gym, it doesn’t matter,” Cipra said. “You need to hit them in competition.”