A Great Day To Be a Bruin: UCLA Women’s Gymnastics Win National Championship, Brian Price Is Top Local Picked in NFL Draft

Yesterday was a great day to be a Bruin as for starters, a new sports dynasty may have been born  in Gainesville, FL.

In a convincing fashion, UCLA’s Women’s Gymnastics team won the NCAA championship at the University of Florida last night with a score of 197.725, beating second place Oklahoma by a fifth of a point.

This makes it Coach Valorie Kondos-Field’s sixth title, and the school’s record 105th.

“…really I can’t remember in my 29 teams at UCLA having a team that bought in from day one, said Kondos-Field. “They bought into every little thing that we asked them to do…” which undoubtedly contributed to their dominating performance.

To say that the Bruins dominated would be an understatement, as they posted eleven scores of 9.9 or better, led by Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs’ 9.95 on floor and the same score from Brittani McCullough on the vault.

The all-around scores were likewise dominated by the ladies from Westwood, as Vanessa Zamarripa (39.625) and Anna Li, in her last team competition (39.575) finished one-two in that area, including scoring 9.9s on the uneven bars.

UCLA especially stepped up on the balance beam, which traditionally has been an Achilles’ heel for the team. All six Bruins scored 9.8 or better on that apparatus, led by Hopfner-Hibbs and Zamarrippa’s 9.9.

After doing so well on the beam, it was practically a done deal as the Bruins had only the floor exercise, their strongest event, to do. All they needed was a 9.7 or better from either McCullough or Hopfner-Hibbs to clinch the title, and McCullough sealed the title with a career-high tying 9.925.

The best thing about these band of sisters is that except for Li, everyone returns in 2011. Hence the possible dynasty.

Truly congratulations are in order for these Bruins. The Bruin Nation is certainly very proud; I know I am.

It would have been good enough if that was the only news coming out of Westwood, but to add to the joy, Brian Price, the outstanding defensive lineman for the Bruins and the Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year, was chosen by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with the third pick of the NFL Draft’s second round, 35th overall.

The best part about that was he was the first local taken, ahead of all the USC Trojan players in the draft, including Taylor Mays, who was taken by the San Francisco 49ers later in the round, which was “…pretty cool, ” according to Price. “UCLA is getting back on the map”, he added.

The fact that he was picked before any Trojans confirmed that.

And to add a little blue and gold cherry to the top of the sundae, the Bruin baseball and softball teams scored victories as well, baseball beating Arizona in Tucson in the first game of an important Pac-10 series, 6-3 in ten innings, upping their conference record to 6-4 in what has become a tight race, 28-6 overall. The softball team, like their baseball counterparts ranked in the top ten, also took care of business in beating Stanford yesterday via the mercy rule, 10-0 in five innings.

If all of those triumphs didn’t make yesterday a great day to be a member of Bruin Nation, I honestly don’t know what would…except for perhaps a BCS title in football and a Final Four in basketball.

And sooner or later, those will eventually come;  just give it time.

Meanwhile, I’ll sit back and enjoy our now- 105 national titles.