Women’s gymnastics dominates UCSB, Stanford

Women’s gymnastics dominates UCSB, Stanford

Leah Homma wins vault, uneven bars on her way to all-around
Bruin victory

By Esther Hui

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

For the second week in a row, the UCLA women’s gymnastics team
came away with the highest team score and every one of the first
place event titles, as it beat Stanford and Santa Barbara Saturday
night at the Wooden Center. The Bruins won the meet by almost five
points (193.275 to second place Stanford’s 188.500), and with the
top two all-around scores by Leah Homma (39.225) and Stella Umeh
(38.950), UCLA showed there is only one word to describe its early
season performances ­ solid.

"What we saw tonight was real gymnastics," UCLA coach Valerie
Kondos said. "It’s not going out there and trying to save things
and barely making it. We made the routines happen, we made the
tricks happen. The athletes took one trick at a time and showed
that they’re in control."

The Bruins took the lead after the first event, and would never
relinquish it against the spirited, but seemingly less polished
Stanford contingency.

Leading the Bruins was Homma, who rebounded from a third place
all-around at last weekend’s dual meet with Fullerton to win the
all-around, vault (9.850) and bars (9.850). Homma, 1994 Pac-10
all-around champion, had competitive performances on all events,
throwing a solid back handspring-layout-back handspring combination
on beam for a 9.775, as well as high tumbling followed with stuck
landings on all floor tumbling passes (9.750).

Second place in the all-around was Umeh, who started out with a
shaky vault sequence (half-twist on, full-twisting back flip off
for a 9.45) to wow the crowd with a four-trick back handspring
layout tumbling combination on the beam (first place 9.850). Umeh
also had one of the toughest floor tumbling passes of the night,
opening with a double layout flip for a 9.850.

Performing only three events for the Bruins was senior Kareema
Marrow, who, despite not being 100 percent because of an ankle
injury, showed that when fully recovered, she will vie for the top
all-around position with Homma and Umeh. Marrow tied with Homma for
first place on vault (9.850) with a high piked handspring with one
step, and threw a previously unpracticed double layout dismount on
bars with a small step for 9.75.

But Marrow’s greatest moment of the evening came on floor.
Tumbling to the roars of a cheering section which seemed to have
eyes only for her, Marrow stuck a double layout opening pass and
piked double back third pass to win the event with a 9.90.

"You can pick any one of the athletes on our team this year, and
they have specific fans who come just to watch them," Kondos said.
"In the late ’80s we had three different personalities on the team,
and people would come to meets just to see Tanya Service, or Kim
Hamilton, or Jill Andrews. It’s nice to have those personalities
again, that’s what builds your program, if the crowd starts
relating to one or two athletes."

UCLA counted only one fall in the entire evening, with two
athletes wobbling off the beam in the third rotation, a record
which allowed only two top-three event placements by other teams.
Most errors by the Bruins came from overdoing moves, with Amy Smith
and Corinne Chee tumbling out of bounds on floor with
over-rotations. Kondos sees these mistakes as athletic maladies
which will be remedied with the upgrading of tumbling passes in the
following weeks. Several gymnasts will add full twisting double
back flips for their first passes on floor.

"We’re aiming for a lot more difficulty by the UCLA invite,"
Homma said. "Hopefully by then we’ll have a lot more in our
routines, but until then we’ll probably just stick to the routines
we have. The team did great, we went up three points from last
week, and I hope we just continue going up."