p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n
During home meets, the moment the UCLA women\u2019s gymnastics team transitions to the mat for floor exercise, the crowd is hyped. The arena announcer further pumps up the audience. During each Bruin\u2019s routine, their teammates are locked in on the edge of the mat cheering while mimicking key moves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe floor really is a show,\u201d UCLA coach Janelle McDonald said. \u201cIt\u2019s a performance. [Gymnasts] can use their own personality out there to perform for the crowd, put their own stamp on it, so to speak, more so than other events.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each routine displays the identity of each performer. Each jump, performed with personality, draws the crowd in. Anytime the gymnastics are dialed in and made to look easy, the crowd can focus on the performance. It is an incredible event to finish a meet at home, McDonald said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team\u2019s been putting in a lot of work because we know that that can be a really strong event for us and so it was great to see it all come together last weekend,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
UCLA earned a 49.700 on the floor during its meet against Washington this past week, the highest team total in the event during the NCAA gymnastics season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think the energy that we all bring in our floor routines and how different they are really stands out for UCLA gymnastics,\u201d Tiana Sumanesekera said. \u201cYes, the best show in L.A., and I think we really bring that to the table.<\/p>\n
Sumanasekera earned a season-best of 9.925 on her routine during the meet against Washington. She attributes the team\u2019s success to assistant coach BJ Das\u2019 choreography.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re so good at captivating the audience in the sense that we bring our own style throughout our routines,\u201d she said. \u201cI think every single one of our routines, BJ did an incredible and phenomenal job of individualizing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
UCLA competes at Minnesota on Saturday at a sold out arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really is just a show and that\u2019s what we want to put on,\u201d McDonald said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> During home meets, the moment the UCLA women\u2019s gymnastics team transitions to the mat for floor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[11273,80868,19611,80870,27978,80869,48,52,51,47,50,49,80871,34672,72935,59727,18170,1860,427,69393,558],"class_list":["post-168244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-crowd","tag-floor-exercise","tag-gymnast","tag-home-meet","tag-illness","tag-incredible-event","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mat","tag-mcdonald","tag-meet","tag-past-week","tag-routine","tag-show","tag-team","tag-ucla-gymnastic","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}