Bruins capture national title for first time in school history

Monday, 4/21/97

Bruins capture national title for first time in school
history

Favorite Georgia stumbles, UCLA capitalizes on mistakes

By Lisa Quon

Daily Bruin Contributor

It was a fairy-tale ending to a magical season.

With a little luck and a lot of talent, the UCLA gymnastics team
has proven to be what they’ve believed all season – the No. 1
collegiate gymnastics team in the nation.

On Friday night in Gainesville, Fla., the Bruins jumped, danced
and performed their way to victory with a first-place finish at the
NCAA National Championships.

This is the first time ever UCLA has won the NCAA women’s
gymnastics championship. Prior to this, Utah, Georgia and Alabama
were the only teams to win the title in the meet’s 16-year
history.

Scoring a 197.150, UCLA beat out fellow Pac-10 team ASU
(196.850), who finished second, followed by Georgia, Michigan,
Florida and Nebraska.

"The only word to describe how I feel right now is ecstatic,"
Leah Homma said. "I could not think of a better way to end my
senior year."

Georgia stood to be the greatest threat to UCLA in the Super Six
finals, but three uncharacteristic falls by the Bulldogs on beam in
the first rotation virtually eliminated them them from first-place
contention. Though they made a commendable comeback, Georgia’s
gymnasts could not overcome the great deficit they faced the rest
of the meet.

"I’ve never been so happy to be third," Georgia coach Suzanne
Yucolan said. "If there was a way to get it back on effort, we’d be
national champions."

Going into the final rotation, it looked like UCLA, top-ranked
Michigan, and a surprising contender, ASU, would battle it out for
the title. ASU was the first to finish, and could only watch as
UCLA performed on bars and Michigan finished up on floor.

UCLA needed a score of 49.25 to overtake the Sun Devils.
Michigan was eliminated when the Wolverines scored a low 48.875 in
their last rotation. All six bar scores for the Bruins were 9.825
or higher and with the impressive final total of 49.5325, the
Bruins took the victory.

"This has definitely been the toughest year competition-wise
that I’ve coached gymnastics," UCLA coach Valorie Kondos said. "And
at nationals it was dog-eat-dog from the preliminaries on; every
single tenth of a point counted.

"I attribute our winning to our philosophy that whenever you put
on a leotard, you do the best gymnastics you can without just
focusing on beating other teams," Kondos continued. "This helps us
to produce the calm necessary to compete well."

To top off the year, Kondos was named Coach of the Year for the
second year in a row by the National Association of College
Gymnastics Coaches.

"I’ve said since the beginning of the season that if Georgia
opened the door and we hit that we could win the meet," Kondos
said. "That’s exactly what happened."

The Associated Press

Deborah Mink’s vault scored 9.85 points toward UCLA’s
victory.

–>