Wednesday, April 3, 1996
By Esther Hui
Daily Bruin Staff
Last fall UCLA head coach Valorie Kondos was experimenting with
music for a floor routine, when she had an interesting idea.
"The beat was to one of the Greek dances that I know well, and I
was dancing around and I realized my heart rate was getting up,"
Kondos said. "I always like to teach the athletes as much as I can,
so I decided they’re going to get their aerobics activity in, and
they’re going to learn about different cultures."
Which resulted in a memorable Greek dancing revival up in the
ballet room of the Wooden Center by the women’s gymnastics team.
Kondos laughs about this because it ended up being much harder than
aerobics, and by the end the gymnasts were begging to stop.
"They were just dying and saying, ‘Can we stop?’ " Kondos said.
"I said ‘No! The song is not over yet.’ And Greek songs are
notorious for going on and on and on."
Kondos’ Greek background tends to pop up every now and again in
the gym, where Kondos will sometimes exclaim (or swear) in
Greek.
She was raised in a Greek community in Sacramento, but for a
year and a half starting when Kondos was 4, Kondos’ followed her
father to Athens, Greece where he taught at American University.
Kondos didn’t like the city, so her parents left her with relatives
in a small southern Greek village called Amos, a town of about 25
homes.
"Every morning we would get up and let all of the animals up,
tie them to the donkey, and go down to the pasture," Kondos said.
"Every evening we’d go down and pick them up. It’s like a real
village, they didn’t have running water, they didn’t have
electricity, they had dirt floors. That’s where I was happy.
"I got totally immersed into the Greek culture, and I was four
so I learned Greek very easily. I became this little Greek village
girl."
What Kondos remembers most about Greece, and what she looks for
when she returns every few years, is the Greek culture’s love of
life. From the Greek dancing, to the breathtaking turquoise color
of the Mediterranean Sea, Kondos maintains there is a tendency in
Greece toward a simple appreciation of things.
"Imagine Japan and China with all of the technology and how the
whole country is very organized," Kondos said. "Now imagine if the
Greeks went in, everything would be turned upside down. The Greeks
do not live to work, they work so that they can live."
Kondos’ background is a nice supplement to one of the more
ethnically diverse collegiate gymnastics teams in the country. The
Bruin roster includes two Canadians, a Guatemalan gymnast and
Hawaiian gymnast Kiralee Hayashi, whose relatives made Hawaiian
leis for the gymnasts to march out in at the UCLA Invitational.
Kondos tries to choreograph each gymnast’s style into their floor
routines.
"We probably have more diversity than most teams, a lot of
different backgrounds," undergraduate assistant coach Megan Fenton
said. "That’s one of things she can do, take a lot of people with
nothing in common and make it work for them."
Kondos says that her family background has helped her form a
community within the gym, and helped balance her strong
personality.
"There’s a lot of tradition in the Greek culture," Kondos’
brother Stephen said. "There’s an extended family, not just
brothers and sisters, but aunts and uncles and cousins who are
almost like brothers and sisters. It gives you a heritage. The
Greek cooking, dancing and the church give you a sense of
identity.
"Valorie is very proud of her Greek heritage," he added. "She
likes being Greek. It gives me an identity, for her it’s more a
culture she inherited and that she enjoys."
With last year’s NCAA team finals one of the closest ever and
this year’s competition threatening to have even more parity,
individuality could be what separates this year’s good from the
greatest.
"I think my basic philosophy in life that I try to adhere to, is
not to live for your work," Kondos said. "When I think of any
European culture, you’re right down there by that Mediterranean
Sea, and you can’t help but be in constant awe of the wonders of
God.
"That is what overall I would try to offer my athletes Â
besides helping them be the best gymnasts they can be  is to
really appreciate the little things."
FRED HE/Daily Bruin
Undergraduate assistant coach Megan Fenton states that
gymnastics head coach Valorie Kondos’ background enables her to
"take a lot of people with nothing in common and make it work for
them."