The last time the UCLA gymnastics team visited Gainesville, Fla., it returned national champions. Thirteen years later, the Bruins are heading back to the Stephen C. O’Connell Center, hoping to win their sixth NCAA championship.
After scoring above 197 in its previous postseason appearances, the team moved up two spots in the rankings to claim the top spot going into the national championships.
“We don’t think about our No. 1 ranking, but I do think that it is really important from a national gymnastics perspective,” said coach Valorie Kondos Field, who was only in her third year as coach when UCLA won its first championship. “It’s nice to be recognized through scores we have earned as the top seed in the country.”
Before advancing to the team finals, the Bruins must place in the top three of today’s preliminary round. UCLA will participate in the afternoon session with No. 4 Oklahoma, No. 5 Utah, No. 8 Oregon State, No. 9 LSU and No. 12 Nebraska. The other six qualifying teams, including host Florida and Pac-10 rival Stanford, will battle each other in an evening session.
“(We) like to have the afternoon session because it gives (the gymnasts’) bodies more time to heal before Friday night and gives them a little bit more rest,” said Kondos Field of competing at 1 p.m. rather than 7 p.m.
However, competing in the earlier session may have adverse effects on the Bruins’ individual all-around competitors: senior Anna Li and sophomores Vanessa Zamarripa and Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs. Kondos Field considers this possibility the “only drawback” of performing first.
Last year, the Bruins missed out on the NCAA Super Six on a tiebreaker against Utah for third place, missing out on the team finals for the second consecutive year. Despite the team’s failure to advance, individual UCLA gymnasts shined in 2009, with Zamarripa and Hopfner-Hibbs coming in third and seventh place, respectively, in the all-around.
Five-time defending champion Georgia will not make an appearance in the preliminaries for the first time in 26 years after losing a tiebreaker for second place to Oregon State in an NCAA regional meet. The Gym Dogs were the only Top 12 team to not advance to the championships.
After taking a two-week break from competition, the Bruins enter the preliminary meet mentally prepared with well-rested bodies. However, the status of injured freshman Lichelle Wong, whose sprained ankle is more severe than expected, remains questionable.
Kondos Field believes that the preliminaries will require a strong performance from the Bruins since all the competitors are capable of big scores.
“It is a great field and no one can take anything for granted,” Kondos Field said.