University of Georgia Athletics
Inside The Rivalry: Georgia-UCLA
March 06, 2010 | Gymnastics
Though Utah and Alabama may have more history, there is no rivalry more relevant since the turn of the 21st century than Georgia and UCLA.
The Bruins, not long ago considered a newcomer to the women’s gymnastics stage, captured their first national championship in 1997 and won four of five NCAA titles from 2000 to 2004.
That run of dominance has been one-upped by the Gym Dogs, who tied an NCAA record held by Utah—set when the sport was in its infancy—by winning five consecutive national championships from 2005-2009.
“I think there is a mindset and an attitude that you’re supposed to be No. 1, and I think that both programs have that,” head coach Jay Clark said. “Both programs expect to be at the top and have a tremendous amount of pride in their institutions and in their gymnastics programs and in their location.”
Location is a big factor in this rivalry. While it might be easy to explain to any fan outside of the gymnastics world the significance of Georgia-Florida or Georgia-Alabama, the Georgia-UCLA rivalry is one that only applies to women’s gymnastics.
One thing that gymnastics shares with many other collegiate sports is a contempt for the SEC, which has exerted itself again this year as the best top-to-bottom conference in the nation, with all seven teams in the top-16 nationally.
“You see t-shirts in Utah that say, ‘I hate the SEC,’ so I think that a lot of times other schools and other conferences spin their wheels being more concerned with what the SEC is doing than perhaps addressing some of their own issues,” Clark said. “I think one of the reasons that the SEC is so strong and so powerful across the board is that we’re so focused on beating each other and doing well within our conference because that’s our measuring stick.”
Cassidy McComb and Kat Ding, two Georgia gymnasts from outside the SEC footprint, gave their take on the rest of the country’s view of the Southeastern Conference.
“I definitely was a UCLA fan being from that side of the country,” said McComb, who hails from Henderson, Nevada. “I didn’t want to come here at all, and then, as I got older, I realized that Georgia was the better program. No one likes their opponent that beats them, and the SEC definitely dominates.”
“I remember last year at Nationals when there were five SEC schools and one other school [Utah] not from the SEC, and I remember the SEC fans chanting ‘S-E-C! S-E-C!’ so I’m pretty sure they all hate us,” Ding (from Sparks, Nevada) laughed. “We work hard for what we want though.”
Regardless of talent, these two schools have been able to separate themselves from a pack at the top to win 12 of the last 13 national championships -- seven for Georgia, five for UCLA.
“Both schools have been able to attract some of the best talent in the country,” Clark said. “Los Angeles is not a hard place to recruit to I wouldn’t imagine, so I think that talent has been the biggest separator of both programs.”
Though that talent will almost certainly lead Georgia and UCLA back to the NCAA Championships in Gainesville at the end of April, the recent regular season meetings between the two powers haven’t always lived up to the hype.
With the exception of Georgia’s close loss in Los Angeles in 2007 (197.150-197.000), Georgia has won four of the last five regular season showdowns by an average of more than a point, highlighted by a 197.525-195.200 beating in 2006 when UCLA counted a fall on bars and only competed five gymnastics on the event.
Head coach Jay Clark expects that this year, when Georgia is ranked No. 5 and UCLA No. 3, that the Gym Dogs will have the Bruins’ full attention, especially after a 197.725-196.125 victory at Pauley Pavilion last year.
“Unlike other years, I would expect to see their full complement of athletes here, where we have not seen that in the past,” Clark said. “Because they think they can win, I believe they’ll come here and they’ll give us their best performance regardless of how far they have to travel.”
Beyond the three-hour time change from Los Angeles to Athens, the Gym Dogs are hoping to lean on a sellout crowd of over 10,000 to jar the visiting Bruins. It will be by far the largest crowd that UCLA competes in front of during the regular season.
“It’s huge that it is here and we have the home crowd advantage and that we have our fans behind us, and those girls could choke because we have such a huge crowd,” McComb said. “They definitely have a much smaller crowd when it comes to their arena.”
UCLA has drawn fewer than 5,000 fans in Georgia’s last three trips to the West Coast. Coach Jay Clark and the Gym Dogs are counting on Georgia’s student section to show up in full force Saturday, despite the contest taking place during the first weekend of spring break.
Georgia looks to remain unbeaten at home as they take on the Bruins at 4:00 p.m. ET today. Check out georgiadogs.com for live video coverage as part of Meet Central presented by Athens Regional Medical Center.
Kevin Copp is the host of the Georgia Gym Dogs Show, which airs on georgiadogs.com, and the play-by-play broadcaster for Georgia gymnastics, soccer, volleyball, and softball.
The Bruins, not long ago considered a newcomer to the women’s gymnastics stage, captured their first national championship in 1997 and won four of five NCAA titles from 2000 to 2004.
That run of dominance has been one-upped by the Gym Dogs, who tied an NCAA record held by Utah—set when the sport was in its infancy—by winning five consecutive national championships from 2005-2009.
“I think there is a mindset and an attitude that you’re supposed to be No. 1, and I think that both programs have that,” head coach Jay Clark said. “Both programs expect to be at the top and have a tremendous amount of pride in their institutions and in their gymnastics programs and in their location.”
Location is a big factor in this rivalry. While it might be easy to explain to any fan outside of the gymnastics world the significance of Georgia-Florida or Georgia-Alabama, the Georgia-UCLA rivalry is one that only applies to women’s gymnastics.
One thing that gymnastics shares with many other collegiate sports is a contempt for the SEC, which has exerted itself again this year as the best top-to-bottom conference in the nation, with all seven teams in the top-16 nationally.
“You see t-shirts in Utah that say, ‘I hate the SEC,’ so I think that a lot of times other schools and other conferences spin their wheels being more concerned with what the SEC is doing than perhaps addressing some of their own issues,” Clark said. “I think one of the reasons that the SEC is so strong and so powerful across the board is that we’re so focused on beating each other and doing well within our conference because that’s our measuring stick.”
Cassidy McComb and Kat Ding, two Georgia gymnasts from outside the SEC footprint, gave their take on the rest of the country’s view of the Southeastern Conference.
“I definitely was a UCLA fan being from that side of the country,” said McComb, who hails from Henderson, Nevada. “I didn’t want to come here at all, and then, as I got older, I realized that Georgia was the better program. No one likes their opponent that beats them, and the SEC definitely dominates.”
“I remember last year at Nationals when there were five SEC schools and one other school [Utah] not from the SEC, and I remember the SEC fans chanting ‘S-E-C! S-E-C!’ so I’m pretty sure they all hate us,” Ding (from Sparks, Nevada) laughed. “We work hard for what we want though.”
Regardless of talent, these two schools have been able to separate themselves from a pack at the top to win 12 of the last 13 national championships -- seven for Georgia, five for UCLA.
“Both schools have been able to attract some of the best talent in the country,” Clark said. “Los Angeles is not a hard place to recruit to I wouldn’t imagine, so I think that talent has been the biggest separator of both programs.”
Though that talent will almost certainly lead Georgia and UCLA back to the NCAA Championships in Gainesville at the end of April, the recent regular season meetings between the two powers haven’t always lived up to the hype.
With the exception of Georgia’s close loss in Los Angeles in 2007 (197.150-197.000), Georgia has won four of the last five regular season showdowns by an average of more than a point, highlighted by a 197.525-195.200 beating in 2006 when UCLA counted a fall on bars and only competed five gymnastics on the event.
Head coach Jay Clark expects that this year, when Georgia is ranked No. 5 and UCLA No. 3, that the Gym Dogs will have the Bruins’ full attention, especially after a 197.725-196.125 victory at Pauley Pavilion last year.
“Unlike other years, I would expect to see their full complement of athletes here, where we have not seen that in the past,” Clark said. “Because they think they can win, I believe they’ll come here and they’ll give us their best performance regardless of how far they have to travel.”
Beyond the three-hour time change from Los Angeles to Athens, the Gym Dogs are hoping to lean on a sellout crowd of over 10,000 to jar the visiting Bruins. It will be by far the largest crowd that UCLA competes in front of during the regular season.
“It’s huge that it is here and we have the home crowd advantage and that we have our fans behind us, and those girls could choke because we have such a huge crowd,” McComb said. “They definitely have a much smaller crowd when it comes to their arena.”
UCLA has drawn fewer than 5,000 fans in Georgia’s last three trips to the West Coast. Coach Jay Clark and the Gym Dogs are counting on Georgia’s student section to show up in full force Saturday, despite the contest taking place during the first weekend of spring break.
Georgia looks to remain unbeaten at home as they take on the Bruins at 4:00 p.m. ET today. Check out georgiadogs.com for live video coverage as part of Meet Central presented by Athens Regional Medical Center.
Kevin Copp is the host of the Georgia Gym Dogs Show, which airs on georgiadogs.com, and the play-by-play broadcaster for Georgia gymnastics, soccer, volleyball, and softball.
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