Utah deals gymnastics first defeat of season
By Joseph Kuehn
Feb. 24, 2008 11:09 p.m.
The Bruin gymnastics team found out Sunday how tough it is to win a meet when one of your top gymnasts is not performing at the top of her game.
With sophomore Anna Li struggling for most of the meet, the No. 9 Bruins fell to No. 2 Utah 197.450 to 195.825 at Pauley Pavilion. It was the Bruins’ first loss of the year, giving them a record of 11-1.
“You cannot win when one of your top players is not on her game, and Anna had a really rough meet,” coach Valorie Kondos Field said.
Tasha Schwikert was the only Bruin to place in the all-around. She finished in third place with a score of 39.55.
Li, who had won five of the six all-arounds this year, struggled from the outset, and she fell for the first time this year on the balance beam, ending her perfect run of 26-for-26 hits on the year.
“Her ankles are hurting her, and she also took a pretty bad fall in warm-ups,” Kondos Field said of Li. “I think she might have gotten a mild concussion there, which would explain her inconsistencies because she is usually our most consistent player.”
Li also did not finish her floor routine after an apparent ankle injury.
“Her status is that her ankles are killing her … but I don’t know yet,” Kondos Field said.
Just moments after watching Li injure herself, Schwikert had to take the floor for her routine. She showed her senior leadership with a great performance, tying her season high with a score of 9.95 to finish the meet.
“I was a bit rattled,” Schwikert said. “(Li’s injury) did affect me mentally a little bit, but when the crowd started chanting my name, I knew I had to do this for the crowd, for my team, for myself, and for my teammates who got injured.”
Li was not the only gymnast to injure herself during the meet. Redshirt freshman Brittani McCullough also suffered a concussion in warm-ups, and was unable to compete.
The team started well, with scores of 49.275 on the vault and 49.25 on the uneven bars, and was only trailing by .075 after two events.
A highlight on the uneven bars was the return of junior Kristina Comforte, who had been out since Jan. 27 with a bruised knee. The bars also saw the debut of freshman Shavahn Church, who had missed the first half of the year after having knee surgery in December.
The next event was the beam, where the Bruins fell once and faltered several times, resulting in a score of 48.425. The team recovered with a decent floor exercise score of 48.875, but it was not enough to win the meet.
According to Schwikert, the team appeared to be a bit nervous about facing the country’s second-ranked team.
“Everyone just looked, to me, to be a little nervous, more nervous than expected, but of course (it’s understandable) because Utah is No. 2 coming into our home,” Schwikert said. “We have a very young team and so that is hard to deal with, especially since this is the first really tough team we have competed against here.”
UCLA also traveled to Tucson, Ariz., on Friday evening, where they defeated the Arizona Wildcats 196.575-196.050. With two meets in the same weekend, Kondos Field rested most of her regulars after the first two events, giving an opportunity to other gymnasts on the team to compete.
“I told them before, “˜Whenever any one of you is asked to compete, you have proven you can do it,'” Kondos Field said about the lineup she sent out for the last two events on Friday.
“I was quite surprised,” Schwikert said about the alternates’ performances. “I didn’t expect the freshmen to step up and compete as well as they did.”
The Bruins will next compete this upcoming Sunday at home against No. 8 Oregon State in their Breast Cancer Awareness Meet.
