UCLA Comes Up With New Faces, Gymnastics Title

All the great names are retired to the national scene or, in the case of Olympic heroes Peter Vidmar and Mitch Gaylord, to flat-out celebrity. But men’s college gymnastics is still in good hands, even if the hands are likely to change a lot more than they ever did.

Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion, UCLA again won the 31st UCLA/Times Invitational, beating rivals Arizona State and Nebraska by more than a point. In doing so, UCLA unveiled the new breed, youngsters such as Brian Ginsberg and Curtis Holdsworth, who each won events.

The meet, held before a crowd of 6,146, also announced the lack of dominance by any one gymnast. Consider that the all-around winner, Minnesota’s Rob Brown, is not rated among the elite on the national scene. Brown, who scored 56.60 to beat Wes Suter of Nebraska (56.45) and UCLA’s Ginsberg (56.35), said: “I expected to win this meet about as much as the crowd did.”

Brown, a senior, is ranked 16th nationally, and a lot of those ranked ahead of him were at the meet. “You had a lot of great names here,” he said, still disbelieving. “Suter, (Arizona State’s Dan) Hayden and Ginsberg. So, yeah, I’m surprised.”

Brown shared the high-bar honors with teammate David Mehnke, but his win owed more to his consistency than to his flash. “I just never put it together like this,” he said. “I always blew one event or another.”

With the Olympic contingent of 1984 disbanded, except for Tim Daggett who is still competing, Brown said there would probably be a bunch of gymnasts being as surprised as he was Saturday night. “You’re going to see a lot of flip-flopping among the all-around winners,” he said. “There’s no dominant guy any more.”

In a couple of years, though, Ginsberg could emerge as one of those guys. Relatively unknown when he came to UCLA from Mobile, Ala., last year, he has used some international competition over the summer as a springboard onto the elite level. Barely ranked in the top 50 last year, he has used a victory in the Brazil Cup and International Cup of Champions to soar to eighth in the country. In fact, last September, he had qualified as an alternate on the U.S. team.

Even so, he was chosen along with Daggett and Arizona State’s Hayden to the American Cup team.

Saturday night, even though he placed third in the all-around and won the rings competition, Ginsberg was not at his best. On floor exercises, his strongest event, he scored just 9.20. “I wasn’t pleased,” he said. Yet he is pleased to be doing as good as he is, considering where he came from. “From last year, a lot of my tricks are more difficult, more original.”

He added that he had to keep upgrading his routines because fellow youngsters like Holdsworth (who won pommel horse) and David St. Pierre and Michael Chaplin are all pushing and pushing hard.

In fact, it was this contingent of freshmen who secured the team win, according to UCLA Coach Art Shurlock. “They did their best work of the year,” he said. Good thing because senior Rob Campbell, the most polished performer, had an off night.

Arizona State, which finished second to UCLA’s 278.80 with 277.80, might have been considered a surprise as the Hayden twins, Dan and Dennis (with matching flat-tops), were both hobbled by injuries. Neither competed in the all-around. The Sun Devils nevertheless galvanized the small crowd with the floor exercise routines of Jerry Burrell and John Sweeney, the event winner.

Sweeney, in a year of stricter scoring by judges, achieved the night’s high score of 9.80 in the event. Ginsberg also got a 9.80 on rings, Collin Godkin of New Mexico a 9.80 on parallel bars and Mehnke and Brown of Minnesota got 9.80s to win the high bar.

While all these new names were cavorting on the floor, some old ones wandered around it. Gold-medal winner Vidmar, who later performed an exhibition, was at one point followed by a line of a dozen or more autograph-seeking youngsters.

Seeing this commotion threw some light on Ginsberg’s comments for UCLA’s media guide. He said he competes in the spot for “the excitement and danger involved, as well as for the fame and fortune.”