Every day when Emma Andres comes into the Yates Gym for practice, she takes a moment to look around.
She gazes up at the historic photos lined along the walls of past championships and former gymnasts. She notes the team’s matching Bruin blue warm up shirts all with the UCLA script big and bold on their chests.
Lastly, she looks at her teammates. The faces and names she grew up admiring and looking up to now surround her.
“The fact that I’m on the team is still so surreal to me,” she said.
Before joining the UCLA program this year, Andres’ main interaction with the team was through what she saw on social media. Growing up in Rocklin, Calif., she wasn’t able to watch the Bruins’ meets in person, so instead, she’d scroll through the team’s posts with big and bright eyes, replaying every video of a routine multiple times, studying every skill.
Whether young gymnast or just a fan of the team, thousands of people pay close attention to the Bruins social media posts just like Andres. UCLA’s vast social media presence is one of its main outlets in reaching fans all over the world. But the outreach doesn’t stop at the screen. After most meets, whether home or away, a handful of gymnasts take part in autograph and picture sessions with fans.
While the celebrity-like presence can sometimes get out of hand, the Bruins understand the opportunity at hand is not about the amount of followers, but about the impact they’re creating.
“It’s wonderful, but it’s also a responsibility,” UCLA coach Chris Waller said. “It gives us, whether it should or shouldn’t, a little more meaning to the fact of the way we carry ourselves and what we value.”
UCLA gymnastics has the largest social media following of all collegiate women’s sports teams with a number of over 750,000 followers coming from a combination of of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The team has 349,000 followers on Instagram. Through comparing that number to numerous women’s professional sports teams, the Bruins’ staff found they were only second to the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, which lists two million followers on its Instagram account.
“That is really impressive for an NCAA team,” senior Madison Kocian said. “But also just for a female sport because before there was so much recognition around football, basketball and the sports that bring in a lot of revenue, but now to see how many fans we have following us and aspiring to be like us one day, that’s more of our motivation than anything.”
After Katelyn Ohashi went viral last season with her perfect floor routine, UCLA saw firsthand how far, and how quickly, their reputation had spread. It happened on planes and in restaurants to even being recognized by bus drivers and TSA agents.
“It was insane,” Waller said. “We could go nowhere without everybody asking, ‘Oh my God, is that Katelyn Ohashi?’ or ‘Are you the UCLA gymnastics team?’ It was nonstop.”
Attend any home meet at Pauley Pavilion and you’ll see the fandom in person. Seats filled with young girls watching in awe or lines of young gymnasts starstruck smiling for pictures next to the women they dream of becoming.
It’s those moments which bring the current Bruins back to when they were on the opposite side of the interaction.
Waller will always remember being at a gymnastics camp and doing a skill on the pommel horse when Olympians Jim Hartung and Ron Galimore walked by. All they said was one small sentence, “Hey, that was pretty good,” but to Waller it was so much more.
“In my 10-year-old mind, I heard, ‘Oh my gosh, I can be somebody,” he said. “It made me believe in myself.”
It’s moments similar to that, like when Andres’ mom embarrassed her in middle school by asking Kyla Ross for a picture with her while at a U.S. National Team meet, that make each autograph or social media post an opportunity instead of a burden.
“I feel like if one of our athletes looks a person in the eye and gives them their attention and time for a moment, that kid just feels like, ‘Oh my gosh. I guess I’m important. I guess I matter,” Waller said. “It’s a gift to have that notoriety, but how you use that gift is what is important.”
No. 3 UCLA (8-2, 3-1) vs. No. 3 Utah (8-0, 4-0)
When: 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Pauley Pavilion
TV: ESPN2
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February 23, 2020 at 07:25AM
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UCLA gymnastics leads social media impression, leaves lasting impact at meets - LA Daily News
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