Nathan Howard, the track and field coach at Los Alamitos High, which Julia attended, didnt recall her participating in the sport. Kondos Field, who led the school to seven NCAA team titles in 29 seasons before retiring in April, said the friendship had nothing to do with Caires recruitment. We generally associate sports, regardless of the level, with some form of meritocracy.. The gymnast who makes it to college has banked the necessary 10,000 repetitions of a skill to be able to perform it anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances, Kondos Field wrote. The Times requested the video, but Tamberg said the school couldnt locate it.

Tomlinsons son, Cory, was listed on UCLAs golf roster for the 2010-11 season, though there is no record that he played. Kondos Field said routine preseason medical tests in 2016 found a condition that prevented Caire from being cleared to train or compete. Caire declined to comment, saying Kondos Field addressed all of these questions from The Times about her gymnastics experience and recruitment to UCLA. Guerreros youngest daughter, Kathryn, was admitted as a rowing recruit in 2004. Asked by The Times about Caires gymnastics experience, the coach wasnt sure how long she trained at Club Champion. Her uncle, Paul Chiames, said he has been friends with Kondos Field for three decades and the two were roommates in the 1990s. At many schools, coaches have wide leeway to fill their rosters with scholarship and non-scholarship recruits, who bypass the admission process used by regular students. Maria Caire was recruited as a gymnast under the strengthened process. Known as @lacrimes on Twitter, during almost 30 years at The Times he also has been part of the breaking news staff that won Pulitzers in 1998, 2004 and 2016. Joel Wittenberg, the golf coach since 2006 at Trabuco Hills High in Mission Viejo where Tomlinson attended, told The Times he had never heard of him. Emily Carr, who competed at Club Champion for a decade, reached Level 10, graduated from high school in 2017 and is part of Cornells gymnastics team, said she knew of Caire from the neighborhood but never saw her at the club. He believed she could help UCLA in the vault. Johnson said several coaches worked with Caire at Club Champion, including Ivan Bereznyakov. There is no record of her participating in a meet for the club. She was very involved with school, church and a dance team through the church, and because of that she wasnt able to take gymnastics lessons on a consistent basis, Kondos Field said. UCLA head gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos Field reacts as athletic director Dan Guerrero presents her with the naming of the floor during a retirement ceremony at Pauley Pavilion. She has put in as much time to UCLA gymnastics as any one of her teammates, the coach said. Maria Caire is at top left in this portrait of the 2017 UCLA gymnastics team.

UCLA listed Caire as a past member of Pasadena-based Club Champion Gymnastics, but top gymnasts who trained at the club during the same period told The Times they had never seen her practice. I have no idea how she got into UCLA, Johnson said. She became a team manager. Among Caires freshmen teammates were Madison Kocian, who won a team gold medal and an individual silver at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and Kyla Ross, who was a member of the Fierce Five U.S. team that won gold at the 2012 Summer Games in London. Since 1998, UC Regents policy has barred fundraising considerations from influencing admissions. He said the athletic director does not play any role in the admissions process for athletes. Shes been working her [butt] off, to be real honest, ever since.. Richard Winton is an investigative crime writer for the Los Angeles Times and part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Travis Martin, the youngest son of longtime UCLA mens tennis coach Billy Martin, wasnt ranked by TennisRecruiting.net, the go-to site for tracking the sports college recruiting, coming out of Los Angeles Loyola High in 2013. The four other members of UCLAs freshman class that year did receive rankings and included the nations top college recruit. Caire hasnt competed for UCLA because of medical issues but worked as a team manager the last two seasons, Kondos Field said. In 2014, UCLAs student newspaper quoted Kondos Field as saying she suggested the schools golf coach add the son of former Bruins gymnastics coach Jerry Tomlinson.

2015 Texas Level 9, 10 State Championships, 2015 Illinois Level 8,9,10 State Championships, 2015 Virginia Level 8-10 State Championships, 2015 New York State Level 9/10 State Championships, 2015 Washington Optional State Championships. Caires parents, he said, hadnt donated to the school or pledged donations when she was recruited. The expectation has always been that UCLA coaches build their rosters with student-athletes that meet the academic requirements for admission to the university and are athletically qualified, Tamberg said in his statement. The application of every prospective student-athlete is processed the same way, regardless of whether he or she has a personal relationship within the university, UCLA spokesman Tod Tamberg said in a statement. In a follow-up call, Johnson estimated she trained for two years. Cory Tomlinson worked as a UCLA gymnastics manager from 2010 through 2014. Caire, however, had something other aspiring collegiate gymnasts didnt. In a book published last year, Kondos Field described the students uncle as one of my dearest friends. Property records show they owned a condominium together in the late 1990s. An internal UCLA investigation found in 2014 that a family pledged $100,000 to the athletic department in exchange for their daughters admission as a nonscholarship track and field recruit. Tamberg said UCLAs practice has been to notify the eight-member Student-Athlete Admissions Committee that must approve recruits about any family ties a prospective athlete has to university employees. Get up to speed with our Essential California newsletter, sent six days a week. The nationwide college admissions scandal has revealed how some students with fake athletic resumes gained entry to elite universities through bribes to administrators or coaches. When contacted by The Times, Bereznyakov, who no longer works at the club, said he had never heard of Caire. An internal track and field team directory for her freshman year listed her as a manager; athletic department rules prohibit using the athlete admissions process for managers. The prospect of admission through athletic recruitment is even more attractive at elite colleges like UCLA, where just 14% of more than 110,000 applicants were accepted last year. A Times review of UCLAs gymnastics rosters over the last decade found that almost every team member had competed at Level 10, the highest in the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympic program, or had extensive international experience. He said his niece secured a spot on the UCLA team on her own merit because she was a potentially strong vaulter. He added that she has been doing standing backflips since age 5. One of the nine women, however, stood apart. Maria Caires team biography had no record of a competitive career. I immediately put her in a managerial role. Multiple suspects sought after 4 people are shot in downtown L.A. Californians can soon use cryptocurrencies to donate to state and local candidates, Northern California brush fire grows to nearly 90 acres, destroys at least one structure, Authorities seize 228 alleged cockfighting roosters, 500 pounds of marijuana in Antelope Valley. The school requires that students admitted as nonscholarship athletes be athletically qualified and spend their first year in school on the team roster, not as managers. We tried looking her up and it was as if she didnt exist, said Lauren Helgeson, who reached Level 9 while competing for the club through 2016. He played five minutes in one regular-season game as a goalkeeper from 2007 through 2010, according to UCLA records. On current and archived versions of the websites for Club Champion and its booster club, Caire isnt on rosters or lists of recruitable athletes or alumni who competed in college. UCLA wouldnt say when the rule took effect. During an interview with The Times, Kondos Field repeatedly compared Caire to Ariana Berlin, who joined UCLA as a nonscholarship athlete in the fall of 2005 and became a four-time All-American. Tamberg said UCLAs gymnastics coaches believed that a combination of the students athleticism and UCLA-level coaching would make her a valuable asset to the team in the vault. At least 18 students admitted as athletic recruits in recent years were children of coaches or administrators at the school or had close ties to them, according to a Times review of UCLA records and interviews. Several former UCLA athletic employees have privately questioned the circumstances of her admission, though its common for athletes to join college rowing teams without previous experience in the sport. Nathan Fenno is a sports enterprise reporter for the Los Angeles Times focused on investigations, features and in-depth stories. Johnson, who doubles as the public address announcer for UCLA gymnastics meets, said Caire never competed for the club but took private lessons and participated in several evening programs. But the scandal also has renewed scrutiny of a more pervasive complaint in higher education: Applicants use influential connections to take advantage of the side door as athletic recruits despite lacking the accomplishments of their new teammates. Others had thin resumes compared with those of teammates. Kevin Weiner, Travis Martin, Julia Savage, Cory Tomlinson and Kathryn Guerrero didnt respond to requests for comment. How two L.A. COVID swindlers dodged the FBI and joined the European jet set, Inside the battle for control of a legendary music club and the soul of a high desert town, USC researchers identify symptoms associated with increased risk for long COVID, The new 6th Street bridges baptism by L.A.: Street racers, skaters, taggers and a crash, Suspect escapes after barricading himself in Sun Valley home after shooting by LAPD. It also doesnt allow so-called legacy admits for relatives of alumni, but there is no specific policy about the use of the athletic admissions process for children or close associates of university employees. In Kondos Fields book, Life Is Short, Dont Wait to Dance, she described a six-day-a-week training regimen for college hopefuls. Ive never heard of a situation like that unless it was a Make-A-Wish-esque situation, said Elizabeth Grimsley, editor of College Gym News. Although Weiners school biography noted that he was an all-league player at Mira Costa High in Manhattan Beach, many teammates on the talent-packed roster were all-state selections, all-Americans or members of U.S. youth national teams. Berlins journey from Olympic hopeful to accident victim to standout gymnast at UCLA became a made-for-television movie released in 2015, Full Out.. Only two U.S. gymnasts had less than Level 9 experience one who competed at Level 7 and Caire, who had no competition record, according to MyMeetScores, a widely used clearinghouse for gymnastics results. Another former Club Champion gymnast recalled searching in vain for information about Caire after noticing her on UCLAs roster. It may not be the norm that mediocre athletes are given access to these so-called side doors, but it is more prevalent than we think, Eckstein said. Her UCLA team biography did not list a club rowing team. July 2022 Update Due to tweaks in scheduling, the next Olympics have finals in artistic gymnastics, pool swimming and track and field on both Saturday and Sunday of the middle weekend for the second time ever, joining 1988, according to Olympic historian Bill Mallon of Olympedia 07 U Powered by WordPress VIP Gymnastics Victoria is pleased to announce its 2022 Rhythmic Gymnastics Victorian State Team who will travel to the Gold Coast for the upcoming Australian Gymnastics Championships in May It's finals day, and Scott Bregman takes us inside the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, and Overview Led by Team Manager Catriona Cameron-Martin and Head Coach Alicia Regula (Prahran Rhythmic Gymnastics Specialist Centre), the team is comprised of 19 gymnasts The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics are set to kick off on February 4 and run through February 20 of next year gymnast Simone Biles will return to compete in the balance beam final after she sat out all of the other individual events due to mental health issues 6 7 minutes read In Sydney, the floor music included songs from The Rock, Addams Family Values, The Mummy, and The Truman Show, among others.