Young team chalks up with experience, unity

  Daily Bruin File Photo Junior Doni
Thompson executes her routine on the uneven parallel bars
at the NCAA Championships last year in Georgia.

By Eli Karon
Daily Bruin Contributor

Two returning NCAA champions.  Seven returning
All-Americans. Five Olympic athletes. A new assistant
coach. When it comes to creating a recipe for success, UCLA
women’s gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos-Field is the Iron
Chef. With two consecutive NCAA championships and three in the last
five years, Kondos-Field is building a dynasty without peer in
college gymnastics.

This year’s team may hold an advantage over last
year’s, particularly in terms of togetherness.

“Last year we didn’t unite really until regionals,
the second-to-last meet of the year,” junior Doni Thompson
said. “This year it seems like we’ve been united since
day one.  Everybody was here to report the first day, and we
are all on the same page earlier in the season.”

The 2002 season looks to be the most challenging for the young
Bruin squad, as UCLA will face 12 of the top 20 teams in the
country (according to preseason polls).

To most teams, this level of competition is frighteningly high.
But UCLA isn’t most teams. Coming into the season as the
preseason number one team in the nation for the second straight
year, the Bruins show no fear of competition.

“Going out and seeing the best teams in the country is a
really good way to start the season,” Thompson said. “I
think we’re really well prepared.”

“I think it is going to be rigorous,” added Carly
Raab, a junior who has won two championships. “It will be
tiring, but it will definitely be a great challenge for us, and
we’ll be prepared come nationals.”

Reading over the biographies of current Bruin gymnasts is like
walking through the gymnastics Hall of Fame. With sophomores
Jamie Dantzscher, Kristin Maloney, Yvonne Tousek and Alyssa
Beckerman, the Bruins have plenty of competition experience in
high-pressure meets.

In addition, the sophomore members of UCLA’s squad have
already won a national championship. The young age of this talented
squad becomes a few grains of spilled sugar in the recipe that is
the UCLA gymnastics team.

“A lot of teams are in the same boat, having lost key
players. We were fortunate enough to have three amazing freshmen
come in,” Thompson said. “Mohini (Bhardwaj) is
irreplaceable, but they are doing a great job. I don’t think
it’s going to be one individual stepping up to fill her role,
I think everybody has their part being a leader and filling a
position that has been lost.”

Bhardwaj’s stellar beam performance in the final section
of the last meet of the year won the Bruins the 2001 NCAA
championship. The Bruins won’t have the experience and clutch
performance of Bhardwaj this year since she graduated last year.
Instead, they must look to younger members of the squad to pick up
the slack.

“She was the exclamation point,” Kondos-Field
said.

“Age-wise, we’re a young team,” Raab added.
“But we have so much experience. Competition-wise, everybody
is really mature, and I think we’re going to have a lot of
strength.

Just how good are the Bruins?  Good enough to set
staggering goals that somehow still seem realistic.

“Our main goal is to three-peat (as national
champions),” Raab and Thompson say in unison. “Our
second goal is to do that through an undefeated season.”

At the beginning of the season, Kondos-Field proposed this
option to her team: do easier routines and not risk falling in an
attempt to go undefeated. The team roundly rejected her proposal,
instead choosing to continue competing the most difficult routines
in college gymnastics.

“Our win-loss record doesn’t matter,”
Kondos-Field said. “We could throw out skills and cream
everybody, but that’s not the way we do it.”

Last year’s team adopted the motto “We won with our
hearts” after winning the national title. This year, UCLA
again shows tremendous heart, but in a much different manner.

UCLA dedicated its season to the victims and heroes of Sept. 11,
delivering a banner to ground zero to honor those involved.
Wherever the victims and heroes are, Kondos-Field, her assistant
coaches and the team look to feed them a third straight national
championship.

Bon appetit.