UCLA magnificent in Regionals
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 8, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 COURTNEY STEWART Sophomore Onnie
Willisperforms on the beam, helping the Bruins place first
in the NCAA West Regional Championships. NCAA Western
Regional Championships 1. UCLA 197.775 2. OSU 194.075
By Scott Schultz
Daily Bruin Reporter
On Saturday night, before 4,129 screaming fans at the NCAA
Western Regional Women’s Gymnastics Championships, there was
the Bruin dream team and and then there were five other schools
competing for runner-up.
At Pauley Pavilion, the No. 1 ranked Bruins didn’t even
have their best performance of the year. They hit 22 of 24
routines, which, while not perfect, was good enough to distance
them from the rest of their competition.
The Bruins finished with a team score of 197.775 to easily beat
second place Oregon State (194.075).
“We made a commitment 24 hours a day, seven days a week
until nationals to training and competing like champions,”
UCLA Head Coach Valorie Kondos Field said.
The Bruins took first or second place in every individual event,
and had the top three all-around finishers.
 COURTNEY STEWART Sophomore Doni Thompson
competes in the NCAA West Regional Championships on Saturday at
Pauley Pavilion. The Bruins hit 22 of their 24 routines en route to
a convincing victory over second-place finisher Oregon State. Both
Oregon State and UCLA will move on to the NCAA Championship meet,
which will be held in Athens, Ga., from April 19-21. UCLA is
currently the No. 1 team in the nation. Senior Mohini Bhardwaj made
the most of her final home meet by defending her regional
championships in the all-around with a score of 39.775. She was
followed by teammates freshman Yvonne Tousek and sophomore Onnie
Willis.
Bhardwaj won the uneven bars, beam and floor exercise. The one
event she didn’t win was the vault.
In the vault there was a three-way tie between Bruins Tousek,
Willis and sophomore Kristin Parker.
“Each one of us set specific goals for each event that we
want to accomplish,” Bhardwaj said. “That made us
concentrate more on each task, which actually made each routine
better.”
The other teams were clearly awe-struck by the defending
champions, who defended the home floor with a squad entirely
consisting of veterans from last year’s national champion
team and Olympians.
Oregon State overcame a disappointing series of floor exercises,
where its last three athletes missed their routines, to hold off
Brigham Young, take second place and earn a trip along with the
Bruins to the NCAA Championships in Athens, Ga., on April
19-21.
“They could have shut it down after the floor routines
going into the vault, but they didn’t do that,”Oregon
State Head Coach Tanya Chaplin said of her team. “They
stepped it up, and did some of the best vaults I’ve
seen.”
The top two teams in six regional finals, along with any
individual winners with scores over 9.8, will compete at the
national championships.
The Bruins opened the meet with the floor exercise. All six
Bruins received scores above 9.8, setting a bar that would be
nearly impossible for the other teams to reach.
The defending champs followed that up by taking the top four
positions in the vault. By this point, it was obvious that there
would not be an upset like at the Pac-10s, where the Bruins were
narrowly defeated by Stanford.
When UCLA completed an event, that event remained anti-climactic
for the rest of the night. The team excelled at such a high level
that the remaining teams looked Division II by comparison.
“I think we had a lot of team unity today,” Tousek
said. “That gave us a lot of positive energy as we moved from
event to event.”
She added, “That’s going to help us as we move on to
the NCAAs.”
Between now and Athens, the team will taper down its practices
and focus on the mental preparation. In the meantime, the Bruins
will savor the victory while keeping it in perspective.
“We could refocus and expect to win because we have the
most talent ever assembled in college gymnastics,” Kondos
Field said. “What’s important for our athletes to
understand is, it happened because they made it happen.”
