They’ve Fallen, but Two Bruins Show That They Can Get Up

In little more than a day, a couple of UCLA gymnasts fell to the mat, got back up, and then climbed to the top of the awards podium.

Stella Umeh and Heidi Moneymaker had two of UCLA’s three costly falls from the balance beam Friday, ending any chance of UCLA repeating as NCAA champion.

But in Saturday night’s individual finals, Moneymaker won the NCAA title on uneven bars with a score of 9.950.

And Umeh, whose stylish and eerily self-possessed floor exercise to music from “Dead Presidents” earned her a perfect 10 the day before, tied for the NCAA floor title with a score of 9.95, sharing the championship with Georgia’s Karin Lichey.

Umeh’s performance bookended her career after winning the NCAA floor title in 1995 as a freshman, being part of a team title last season, then repeating on the floor in her final UCLA performance. She came as close to bringing the house down at Pauley Pavilion as you can when the crowd is 4,406.

It looked plenty big to Umeh and Moneymaker.

“We usually have a few people in the lower stands, that’s all,” said Moneymaker, a sophomore who became the eighth UCLA gymnast to win an individual event title. “I don’t know the numbers, but it’s usually not nearly as many as this.

“We started off rocky yesterday, and I still wanted something to come out of it.”

Umeh was also entered in the beam competition, but withdrew to concentrate on the floor exercise. The beam competition resulted in a three-way tie at 9.875 among Florida’s Betsy Hamm, Georgia’s Jenni Beathard and her teammate Kim Arnold--who won the all-around title Thursday and anchored Georgia’s team title Friday.

On vault, Florida’s Susan Hines, the 1997 champion who scored perfect 10s on each of the first two days of competition, successfully defended her title but had to share it with Stanford’s Larissa Fontaine.

Hines, by luck of the draw, had to vault first and couldn’t manage another 10, scoring 9.85 and 9.875 on her two vaults.

Then she had to wait through the final seven competitors--and try to do the math. Unlike the team and all-around competition, when only the highest vault counts, the two scores are averaged in the individual vault championship.

“It was awful. I sweated off about 10 pounds waiting. It was really tough,” Hines said.

Then Fontaine, the final competitor, hit a 9.925 on her first vault and a 9.80 on her second--for an average of 9.8625, tying Hines.

There was some temporary confusion at first because Florida Coach Judi Markell, among others, was confused by a wrong score that was raised momentarily for Hines’ second vault. If the 9.9 had been correct, she would have won, but the actual score raised was 9.875, and Markell was satisfied after the explanation.