Column: A year of discovery helps UCLA gymnast Selena Harris find perfection
Selena Harris wasn’t sure she’d make it through the preseason training for her freshman year on the UCLA gymnastics team.
As the first person in her family to go to college, Harris felt lost when she left Nevada for Westwood. She thought she’d have to figure everything out for herself: which classes to take, how to balance challenging academics with gymnastics, how to find her place in a big, new world without her parents and two younger sisters by her side.
“I’m usually not one to ask questions or really ask for help,” Harris said, “but coming here, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”
With its best floor rotation of the season, UCLA made the NCAA championships for the first time since 2019 by finishing second in the regional final.
She learned to seek help from her counselors and from her teammates, who helped her become part of another kind of family. They supported her while she blossomed into the Pac-12 freshman of the year. And they celebrated with her Saturday when she earned the first perfect 10 of her college career, a clutch vault at the NCAA regional finals that just about clinched the Bruins’ ticket to the NCAA championships later this month in Fort Worth.
Vault was supposed to be the Bruins’ worst event. It might have been their last stand Saturday, because they trailed Utah after three rotations and were .050 ahead of Missouri, which had knocked them out of the regionals last year.
Harris turned a potential weakness into a strength by flawlessly performing a Yurchenko 1½, a vault that has a back handspring entry and involves 1½ twists. UCLA posted its second-best team vault score this season to stay behind Utah and ahead of Missouri, and Harris achieved perfection, to the delight of an enthusiastic crowd at Pauley Pavilion.
When her score was posted, teammate Jordan Chiles wrapped Harris in a big hug. Harris, who tied her career-best with an all-around score of 39.750 and edged Tokyo Olympian Chiles by .250 for top all-around honors, seemed stunned. Harris still seemed shocked later, when she appeared with Chiles and Chae Campbell at a news conference that doubled as a comedy show. If Chiles was the emcee, Harris was the star, her 10 a source of wonderment.
“Wow. I wasn’t even planning on getting that,” Harris said. “I was kind of stressing myself out a little bit. My first 10 — I couldn’t even think. I just stood there. I made sure not to celebrate early.
“I trained that in the gym so many times so I’m happy.”
Chiles couldn’t resist chiming in there. “And in postseason. That’s tough, bro,” she said.
Harris appreciated the compliment. “Oh, my gosh, it feels good,” she said. “I did have my moments in preseason, but now that I’m able to put the pieces together and show up for my team when I need to, it means so much.”
First-year Bruins coach Janelle McDonald, whose back-to-the-basics approach and insistence that fun would be the source of their strength individually and as a team provided the foundation for the gymnasts to shine, considers it impossible to overstate the magnitude of Harris’ achievements this season. McDonald said she recently spoke to Harris about being the first college student in her family, offering praise for Harris’ ability to blaze a successful trail in her strange, new world.
“I think that’s something that maybe we don’t recognize enough,” McDonald said. “For me, growing up, my mom was a schoolteacher. My whole family went to college. Things like that. It was just part of our daily conversations. And when you are a first-generation college student, that’s not how you grow up. That’s not the normal. And so you can’t call mom — she’s going to help her and support her, but she’s not necessarily going to know what she’s going through 100%.
“Selena’s learned to ask for help. She’s learned to lean on the people around her. She’s learned to utilize her resources better. Those are things that growth has taught her since she’s come to college, and I couldn’t be more proud of her, and I know her family is so excited to see her thriving as a student athlete.”
Earlier in the week, Harris said her practices had been rough. That she felt a little worn out from competing so much, and mentally drained by having to take her finals.
“It’s the hardest thing ever, honestly,” she said of competing at this level and keeping up with her studies. “It’s just been so hard. My freshman year. Other than the gymnastics, figuring out college has been really hard for me.”
She made it all look easy, earning the second-best all-around score in Thursday’s regional semifinal before earning the top score Saturday. Winning conference freshman of the year honors seemed to invigorate her.
“I felt so accomplished,” she said. “Felt really good because my sisters look up to me a lot and they know I’ve been struggling, so having that, now I can take a deep breath and in training not be so tense and hard on myself, so it means like I’m good, consistent.”
Josh Lim is UCLA’s gymnastics super fan. The third-year student attends home meets, studies the gymnasts’ routines and is the club team’s president.
She was excellent in the regionals. Even more important, she feels she can guide her little sisters now. Both are gymnasts, and Miriam, 16, is going through the recruiting process. “It’s good that I kind of have an idea of what I like and don’t like and just helping her pick,” Harris said. “It has to feel like home for her.”
UCLA feels like home for Harris.
“Now it does,” she said. “At first I was like, ‘Where am I?’ I felt like my mom dropped me off at summer camp. I think just getting closer with the team, it felt like a family.”
A happy family. A winning family that is heading to the NCAA championships.
Go beyond the scoreboard
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