The most remarkable thing about UCLA’s Kristen Maloney is
not that she was the most dominant gymnast in the nation this
year.
It’s that she’s still a gymnast at all.
Maloney, whose gymnastics career was halted for two years by a
serious leg injury before her senior year at UCLA, finished the
2005 season as the national gymnast of the year after receiving the
Honda Award, annually awarded to the top sports competitor.
But as special a year as it was for Maloney, her career could
easily have ended very differently.
Troubles began for Maloney over a year before the 2000 Olympics
in Sydney when she learned that she had sustained a stress fracture
to one of her shins.
The Olympic hopeful took off six months of training and had a
rod placed in her shin to alleviate the pain. It was the first in a
series of several setbacks.
Maloney made the Olympic team and came straight back to UCLA
after her trip to Sydney, helping the Bruins to a national title in
her freshman year despite intense pain in the same shin.
With the pain recurring , Maloney decided to have a new, larger
rod replace the previous pediatric rod that was on her shin, but it
turned out to be too big and was removed. Maloney finally had one
last rod put on the shin, and after several weeks without any
improvement to the leg, the Bruins’ orthopedic surgeon
discovered an infection that had eaten away 80 percent of the bone.
The final rod was immediately removed and Maloney was put on
antibiotics in order to save the leg from amputation, a possibility
if treatment did not begin quickly.
The first antibiotic she tried caused a rash to break out. The
second one made her palms and the soles of her feet blister and
peel. The third antibiotic was just right and was administered
intravenously.
So Maloney played the waiting game.
Some teammates would wash her hair, others would do her laundry,
and another would cook for her, coach Valorie Kondos Field
recalled. She couldn’t get the IV wet and really could do
very little on her own.
“The first year was especially hard because I just had to
rest,” Maloney said.
Soon after, the injury suddenly got worse and Maloney found
herself worrying about her health in general before worrying about
anything else.
“The second year the bone infection got really bad and I
wasn’t even sure if I would ever be able to compete
again,” Maloney said. “At that point, all I was worried
about was my health, not getting back to gymnastics.”
Maloney’s extended leave of absence from the floor was
also becoming an issue, as she had never taken any extended time
off from her sport since becoming a gymnast as a child.
“I didn’t even think about gymnastics,”
Maloney said. “I had no idea how I would do after two years
off because I had never taken that much time off since I had
started gymnastics.”
And while Maloney and Kondos Field knew the danger of the
situation, the rest of the Bruin squad was unable to read
Maloney’s demeanor and had little knowledge of the
seriousness of the injury.
“I don’t think she was scared during her time
off,” junior Kate Richardson said. “No one on the team
knew how bad it really was because she was down and frustrated, but
never came across as scared, and if she wasn’t scared, the
rest of us had no reason to be. It wasn’t until afterward
when Miss Val told us how serious it really was, that we understood
the gravity of the situation.”
As her teammates watched, Maloney slowly began the recovery
process.
With the leg fully healed, the IV was taken out. Light training
began, gradually building up to the normal workload that she had
been used to for so many years. The rust that had built up fell off
flake by flake. Two years of sadness, fright, doubt, and struggle
had finally come to an end.
Maloney’s long wait was rewarded in 2004 when she was
finally able to return to all-around competition in a meet at
Berkeley, the day that signaled her full return to the gymnastics
world. After hitting her floor routine, both Maloney’s
teammates and coaches were overcome with emotion and burst into
tears.
“It was a highlight for anyone involved in gymnastics for
such a well-respected gymnast to return the way she did,”
Kondos Field said. “It was so hard for everyone to see her go
through so much pain and her comeback was nothing short of
miraculous.”
And after helping UCLA add yet another national title in 2004,
Maloney went on to solidify her legacy in 2005 as not just one of
the top gymnasts in UCLA history, but the nation as well. Maloney
was the top-ranked gymnast in the country for the final 10
consecutive weeks of the season, going on to win Pac-10 and West
Regional gymnast of the year honors.
She became the first gymnast in UCLA history to record a perfect
10 in all four events and was named the all-around team leader
along with freshman Tasha Schwikert. At the NCAA championship meet
in Auburn, Maloney was second in the all-round competition and won
individual beam and vault crowns on top of garnering first team
All-American honors.
“She has much more legacy than just what she did at UCLA;
she is respected internationally,” Richardson said.
“She has been such an inspiration and did so much for this
school.”