Welcome to UCLA, and Don’t Get Lost Along the Way

In college, freshman orientation day is usually the day you get directions to the library. It’s an ivy-covered, time-honored college tradition. It’s also traditional that the freshmen forget those directions the next day.

But freshman athletes at UCLA recently got a different kind of orientation, one that they may even remember. This year, for the fifth year, the UCLA athletic department held a series of orientation sessions for its freshman athletes.

“I’m 25 years old and I look as young as you guys do,” Mitch Gaylord said recently as he gazed into the crowd sitting in front of him. “This is pretty weird.”

Actually, it’s not weird at all. The concept of Joe Ward, the senior assistant athletic director to Peter Dalis, includes one session in which former UCLA athletes, such as gymnast-turned-movie star Gaylord--”I was in a movie--it was in the theater about two weeks.”--talk to the new athletes about college life.

“Being a UCLA athlete is being part of a tradition,” Ward said. “We want our freshmen to know what it means to be a Bruin.”

Several former Bruins told them. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and track star Jackie Joyner joined Gaylord in relating their experiences at UCLA.

The freshmen were an attentive audience. And of the three speakers, Joyner seemed to be the most effective when she warned about the dangers of drugs.

“Just about every day you can pick up the paper and read about what happened to a friend or a teammate because of drugs,” she said. “You can sit there and say, ‘It’s not going to happen to me,’ but the one time you take that drink or the one time you take that puff, you could be ruining everything you’ve worked for.

“The next thing you know, all those 8-, 9- and 10-year-old kids who were dreaming to be like you, no longer are. It can all go down the drain.”

Abdul-Jabbar, who majored in history at UCLA when he was known as Lew Alcindor, emphasized the importance of study.

“You have to understand that one of the reasons you are here is that you are an elite,” he said. “You can run faster, throw more strikes, block defensive linemen better and shoot a jump shot better. But a lot of us seem to lose sight of the other side of it. You also have to compete in academics. This is a serious university.

“One of the things you are going to do here is grow up,” he said. “And that’s hard.”

They’re trying to make it a little easier at UCLA. Afterward, there were cake and punch for all. And everyone knew the way to the library.