By Adam Karon
Daily Bruin Staff
The UCLA gymnastics team opens the second half of its season
Sunday when it hosts the No. 7 Stanford Cardinal.
The Bruins are road weary and injury-riddled following five
meets within two weeks. Few gymnasts escaped the early-season
gauntlet unscathed, but some were particularly hard hit by the
injury bug.
Freshman Christie Tedmon is still out with broken toes and will
probably remain sidelined for at least six weeks. The Bruins will
regain the services of junior All-American Malia Jones, who has
been hampered since week one with an ankle injury.
The meet is the first for the Bruins after two weeks off. During
the break, Bruin head coach Valorie Kondos Field instructed her
athletes to “stay on the couch.” Her goal was to make
sure they rested their bodies as much as possible following the
rigorous early season schedule.
“This week is kind of a restart for us,” sophomore
Alyssa Beckerman said. “We got off to kind of a rocky start
this year. We had a couple weeks off to recuperate and refocus what
our goals are.”
As always, the Bruins have set their sights high, shooting for
the Pac-10 championship. Last year, the Cardinal defeated UCLA by
0.05 for the conference title, but finished eighth in the nationals
at Athens, Ga.
The Cardinal is led by a pair of Pac-10 beam champions, Lindsay
Wing and Lise Leveille.
Leveille is a familiar face to several Bruins, having competed
on the Canadian Olympic team in Sydney with current UCLA stars
Michelle Conway and Yvonne Tousek.
Stanford’s last loss came in its first meet of the season
when it traveled to Minnesota to face the Golden Gophers.
UCLA features sophomore Jamie Dantzscher, who ranks first
nationally on both the vault and parallel uneven bars. Junior Onnie
Willis is fifth nationally in the all-around, and Jones is fifth on
the beam.
The Bruins’ four losses this year already double their
total defeats from last year. Tough scheduling and injured key
gymnasts have kept UCLA from repeating its scorching early season
success from a year ago. After a relaxing two-week break, the team
expects to turn things around this weekend against Stanford.
“We’re looking at it as a fresh start,” Tousek
said. “Competing in front of our home crowd is always great,
we’re expecting a lot of energy. We’re good to go for
Sunday.”
In their dual meet against Stanford last year, UCLA ran away
with a 196.925 to 194.675 victory. They have yet to score that high
in what has proved to be a frustrating season to date.
“We’ve been on the road a lot,” Beckerman
said. “This is our first weekend where we had a couple weeks
to come back to the basics.”
Coming back to the basics and to Pauley Pavilion against
Stanford should help the Bruins restart their charge toward the
Pac-10 title.