UCLA Is National Champ Again

They’ve known hard times, had bad injuries, struggled with personal demons. Now these UCLA Bruins may be the best ever.

UCLA won the NCAA women’s gymnastics title Friday night at Pauley Pavilion with a score of 198.125, the highest recorded score in the 23-year history of the competition. Georgia finished second at 197.200 and Alabama and Stanford tied for third at 197.125.

The core of this Bruin team has known hard times, though.

Kristen Maloney has had five surgeries and missed two seasons. Jamie Dantzscher persevered through her father’s recovery from a horrific auto accident at the 2000 Olympics, then missed UCLA’s first seven meets this year with an ankle injury that cost her a chance at competing in the all-around. And Jeanette Antolin was kicked off the team when she was a freshman, a partaker of too many parties and too little training.

These three former U.S. national team members launched into a group hug with their other teammates as soon as Maloney landed gently on the mat without an extra toe wiggle to finish her balance beam routine.

Even before the final rotation, with four teams still to compete on an apparatus, UCLA had clinched its second straight title and its fourth in the last five years.

This was UCLA’s fifth championship, but its first championship win at Pauley. “Winning here was important to us,” Bruin Coach Valorie Kondos Field said.

With Maloney having announced she would return for a redshirt fifth year of competition, and with national team member Tasha Schwikert and former U.S. junior national champion Lindsay Vanden Eykel committed for next year, a third straight title may be in the cards.

UCLA’s score beat the previous high of 198.025 set by Alabama in 1996 and it was only the third time a championship team had scored over 198 points.

No Bruin scored a 10, but UCLA competitors were the highest finishers on each of the four apparatuses: Antolin with a 9.975 on vault and a 9.950 on balance beam; Dantzscher with a 9.950 on uneven bars; and Kate Richardson with a 9.950 on floor exercise, which tied her with Georgia’s Chelsea Byrd and Alabama’s Ashley Miles.

Antolin’s vault was her exclamation point. After having come into the meet with seven straight 10s, the senior from Huntington Beach had stepped out of her landing in Thursday night’s qualifier. It cost Antolin a spot in tonight’s event finals and the all-around title. “I wanted to show what I could really do,” she said. “Coach Val tells us to compete our norm. That was my norm.”

UCLA’s norm this season turned out to be the best.