Jamie Dantzscher couldn’t bear to look.
Only a calamity on the balance beam could have kept the UCLA
women’s gymnastics team from capturing its fifth national
title, yet there stood Dantzscher, hands clasped in prayer, peeking
out from behind her teammates’ shoulders.
“I had no control of the situation,” the
All-American explained. “I’m 10 times as nervous when
I’m not out there myself.”
Dantzscher had nothing to worry about. The host Bruins never
wavered, hitting all six routines on the beam to clinch their
second consecutive NCAA championship Friday night at Pauley
Pavilion.
Near-flawless routines from senior Jeanette Antolin and
sophomore Kate Richardson sparked UCLA to a meet-high score of 49.6
on the beam, giving the squad an insurmountable 50-point lead after
five rotations.
A bye in the final rotation gave Dantzscher time to exhale and
the Bruins ample chance to celebrate as the remaining teams
competed for second place.
“We went out and hit it,” Antolin said.
Finishing with the treacherous beam certainly wasn’t the
ideal scenario for the Bruins, even though they held a commanding
lead at the time. When coach Valorie Kondos Field huddled her team
together before its final rotation, she did what she could to
assuage her gymnasts’ nerves.
“They had a petrified look,” Kondos Field said.
“I had to ask them, “˜Do you want it?’ I had to
snap them out of the deer-in-the-headlights mentality, and that was
the best method I could think of at the time.”
Almost immediately, it worked.
Needing only to avoid counting a fall, the Bruins did that and
much more. Instead of watering down the degree of difficulty of
their beam routines, each UCLA gymnast attempted every element, and
it showed on the scoreboard.
Freshman Lori Winn opened the rotation with a 9.875. Solid
routines from Christie Tedmon and Yvonne Tousek set the stage for
Antolin and Richardson’s heroics. By the time senior Kristen
Maloney stuck her dismount, it was all over.
Antolin, Richardson and Maloney posted the top three scores of
the evening on the beam, and the hug-fest was already underway.
“Once I landed, I felt the biggest relief ever,”
Maloney said. “It was a special moment.”
For the injury-plagued Dantzscher, who has been limited to just
the bars and the floor this season, the championship was validation
for her yearlong struggle.
Although she would have liked to help clinch it on the beam
herself, watching from the sidelines did nothing to diminish the
moment.
“I started crying,” Dantzscher said.
“It’s definitely been a hard year, but this was a
perfect way to end it. To win another national championship at home
means the world to me.”