UCLA gymnastics entered the 2022 season with a chance at redemption. With the Bruins on the verge of making another run at a national championship in 2020, COVID-19 ultimately cut the season short less than two weeks out from the postseason. In 2021, UCLA lost its decorated class of seniors and welcomed a much smaller freshman class than anticipated because of the pandemic, resulting in the blue and gold missing out on nationals for the first time in 15 years. With the No. 1 recruiting class in the country – featuring multiple Olympians – making its way to Westwood this season, the skies ahead looked brighter for the Bruins. But as the sun began to clear the horizon, storm clouds quickly obscured UCLA’s title hopes.
The calm before the storm
In a year full of novelties, the Bruins kicked off their season with the return of a long-held tradition that fell victim to the pandemic in 2021.
UCLA opened its campaign with its annual Meet the Bruins intrasquad meet Dec. 17, competing in front of fans for the first time in nearly two years after the COVID-19 pandemic prevented any spectators from attending meets during the 2021 season.
But more importantly for the Bruins, the intrasquad marked the first competition for many of the team’s highly touted freshmen.
UCLA welcomed a class of seven freshmen in 2022 featuring a Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medalist in Team USA’s Jordan Chiles, another 2020 Olympian in Canadian Brooklyn Moors, Team USA Olympic alternate Emma Malabuyo, and World Championships silver medalist Ana Padurariu, another recruit from Canada.
In addition to Chiles and Malabuyo, the Bruins added a third five-star recruit with Emily Lee making her way to Westwood. The freshman participated in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in June but tore her Achilles tendon in the competition, setting back her Bruin debut.
While many of the highly anticipated freshmen competed in Pauley Pavilion for the first time in December, their official debuts would have to wait.
UCLA was set to begin its 2022 season at the Collegiate Challenge in Anaheim on Jan. 8. But less than two weeks out from the competition, the Bruins were forced to drop out because of COVID-19 protocols within the program.
It was only a nine-day postponement to UCLA’s season, but it foreshadowed choppy waters ahead.
Turbulence ahead
One month after their intrasquad, the Bruins finally took the floor for an official meet.
UCLA headed to Minneapolis on Jan. 17 for a tri-meet with Minnesota and Iowa, the latter of which the blue and gold was expected to outscore handily. The Bruins looked to be en route to doing just that after Chiles opened their season with a 9.825 on bars, followed by a 9.850 from sophomore Frida Esparza.
But then the wheels began to fall off.
Sophomore Sara Ulias – known for her consistency on bars – fell in the third spot, followed directly by another fall from Padurariu. Senior Norah Flatley stabilized the rotation with a 9.900 in the penultimate spot, with a three-time All-American on bars in senior Margzetta Frazier due up.
And yet, Frazier didn’t hit. Frazier almost overcast her first handstand before nearly falling off the bars on her subsequent handstand. Gearing up for the dismount, she clipped her feet on the low bar, limping off the mat and out of the competition.
When the scores were finalized, the scoreboard read 48.300 – UCLA’s worst score on the event in seven years.
The bars rotation was the lowlight of a disastrous season-opening meet in which UCLA tallied its worst team score since 2015.
More importantly for the Bruins, Frazier’s injury would cause more than a one-meet hiatus. It was soon revealed that Frazier broke her foot in the incident, holding her out of competition for an expected six to eight weeks.
In the coming weeks, however, the spotlight on Frazier quickly shifted off the gym floor.
Winter weather advisory
Amid a shaky start to the Bruins’ season, rumors had begun to swirl.
UCLA freshman Alexis Jeffrey had allegedly used racist remarks around the team, inciting backlash from some of her teammates.
Prior to UCLA’s season-opening meet, it was reported that Jeffrey had entered the transfer portal while the freshman had changed her social media to reflect that she had joined LSU’s gymnastics program.
While most of the conflict occurred behind the scenes, the situation came to a head when Frazier tweeted at UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond on Jan. 20.
Frazier seized the attention of the social-media world with a tweet requesting that the athletics administrator get in contact with the Bruins’ coaches.
“Can you talk to our coaches please,” Frazier tweeted.
Less than two hours later, coach Chris Waller was scheduled to speak with the media during his weekly media availability. But when asked to respond to Frazier’s tweet and the allegations against Jeffrey, Waller said he had no comment, with the press conference coming to an abrupt end.
Later that afternoon, Flatley backed up Frazier’s tweet with another request for help at Jarmond.
Flatley implied in her tweet that she and her teammates had repeatedly reached out to Jarmond for support in rectifying the turmoil within the team but that the athletic director hadn’t responded to them in months.
Jarmond publicly responded five days later with a statement indicating he had met with the team that day. He added that the administration had attempted to address the issue within the program by deploying campus and external experts on equity, diversity and inclusion.
Despite Jarmond breaking his silence, things would get far worse for the Bruins before they got better.
Hurricane makes landfall
The day after Jarmond’s meeting with the team, Frazier and senior Sekai Wright made an appearance on comedian and actress Amanda Seales’ podcast, “Small Doses with Amanda Seales.”
The seniors spoke candidly about the state of their team, unearthing the details of the tension that had plagued the program.
Toward the end of the hourlong podcast, Frazier called for Waller to be fired, noting she had not spoken to her coach of more than three years in weeks.
Wright revealed a discrepancy between how the team’s coaches had addressed her previous mental health concerns with how they dealt with similar concerns from Jeffrey in the wake of her teammates calling her out for allegedly racist remarks.
Moreover, Frazier reflected on UCLA gymnastics’ past efforts to promote Black athletes – including its first-ever Black Excellence meet in 2021. The senior said throughout all those years of promoting Black excellence, some of it felt performative.
Wright, meanwhile, said the UCLA gymnastics legacy would be “tarnished forever” as a product of the controversy.
Chasing rainbows
Less than two weeks after the podcast that nearly broke the team apart, the Bruins finally broke out on the gym floor.
Through three meets, UCLA had improved its score in each competition but had yet to score above 196.400, which the Bruins routinely breached in 2021 despite it being one of their worst seasons in years. But the blue and gold blew that score out of the water against Utah on Feb. 4.
UCLA opened on vault with a respectable score on what had been its worst event leading up to the meet. Despite the solid start, the Bruins trailed the then-No. 3-ranked Red Rocks by 0.275 points, opening a gap that was expected to only increase as the competition progressed.
But UCLA didn’t take its foot off the gas after the first rotation. Moving on to bars, it set the tone for the rest of the evening with far and away its best rotation of the season.
The Bruins registered a 49.450, capped off by Chiles’ 9.925 and a 9.950 from Flatley in the anchor spot. Suddenly, the team’s seemingly endless talent had materialized.
The momentum held strong for the blue and gold on beam, as UCLA set its third straight season high of the meet and rebounded from a fall in the second spot.
But it was the floor rotation that sent the Pauley Pavilion crowd into a frenzy and left the Bruins on the verge of an upset.
Flatley kicked off the floor party in front of over 6,000 fans with a 9.925, featuring a near-perfect triple full on her opening pass. Wright followed Flatley with her season debut on floor as the crowd danced along to her upbeat routine.
Senior Pauline Tratz came up with another 9.925 before Chiles did something no Bruin had done in almost two years.
Behind a huge double layout opening pass and picture-perfect tumbling throughout, the freshman earned a perfect 10 – the first for a UCLA gymnast since Kyla Ross did so in 2020. Campbell closed out the meet with the third 9.925 of the rotation as the Bruins’ totaled a 49.600.
In a meet UCLA was expected to lose, the Bruins fell just one-tenth of a point short of one of the best teams in the nation. The blue and gold’s 197.650 was one of the top scores by any team in the nation up to that point.
While the Utah meet seemingly extinguished all the anguish from UCLA’s beginning to the season, that performance largely proved to be an anomaly.
When it rains, it pours
In the wake of its season-defining performance, UCLA found itself bogged down by numerous injuries.
With a potential all-arounder in Frazier still set to miss most of the season, Esparza out for multiple meets and Tratz also sidelined, the Bruins had numerous routines to replace. But depth was limited with junior Kalyany Steele still nursing an injury from last season and junior Chloe Lashbrooke and Lee both still recovering from torn Achilles tendons.
The injury bug, however, continued to haunt UCLA even more.
Competing at Stanford after its breakout meet, the blue and gold opened on bars, where Ulias landed awkwardly on her double layout dismount before limping off the floor.
Ulias would ultimately be diagnosed with a torn ACL, ending her season. But the Bruins wouldn’t escape Stanford without further damage.
Leading off on floor, Flatley’s triple full – which she executed to perfection the week prior – went awry. The senior finished out the routine but also limped off the floor.
UCLA had entered the meet as a team plagued by aches and pains – and left a team decimated by injuries.
Slippery slope ahead
Ulias’ injury left a glaring hole, which quickly became evident in the Bruins’ bars lineup.
UCLA headed into its next meet against Arizona State shorthanded on all four events with multiple Bruins resting, but that was particularly true on bars.
In a flashback to its season-opening rotation in Minneapolis, UCLA alternated hits and falls en route to a 47.825 on the apparatus – its worst score on any event since 2011.
The Bruins rebounded on their next three events but settled for a 195.475, losing their third straight dual meet and falling to No. 18 in the national rankings after being slated at No. 8 in the preseason poll.
The same team that had entered the season as the second-ranked team in the Pac-12 regularly couldn’t keep pace with its conference counterparts. UCLA had already fallen in head-to-head matchups with Oregon State, Utah, Stanford and Arizona State.
Clouds begin to clear
In a continuation of their roller coaster of a season, the Bruins showed a glimpse of their potential once more after faltering against the Sun Devils.
Returning to Pauley Pavilion on Sunday, UCLA bested Washington by nearly three points, reaching the 197 mark for the second time on the year. The scoreboard read 197.125 for the blue and gold, but the immense potential for improvement was perhaps the most significant takeaway.
The Bruins opened the meet in relatively unimpressive fashion with three straight rotations scoring at or below 49.250. They had hit all 18 of their routines, but the meet was certainly nothing to write home about to that point.
Just like it was against Utah, it was the floor rotation that pushed UCLA to new heights against Washington.
After struggling on her tumbling passes in three consecutive weeks earlier in the season, Moors earned her second straight 9.900 on floor against the Huskies. Tratz followed with a 9.925, with Chiles adding a 9.950, leaving sophomore Chae Campbell needing a 9.875 to push the Bruins above 197 on the afternoon.
Campbell left no doubt.
The sophomore opened with a huge full-in before closing with a sky-high double tuck, leaving the judges no room to deduct. Campbell’s perfect 10 on floor marked the first of her career and capped off a UCLA floor rotation that earned a score of 49.550.
For the first time since nearly upsetting the Red Rocks, the Bruins looked like a team capable of making a postseason run. Once again, there was only one question to ask.
Had UCLA caught lightning in a bottle or did blue skies truly lie ahead for the Bruins?
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