Ciena Alipio has been a key member of the UCLA beam lineup since her freshman season, thanks to her impressive consistency and precise execution, which bring in big scores. She says scoring a perfect 10.0 on the event to help the Bruins win the Big Ten Championship last year was one of the highlights of her career. This season, however, Alipio has made the most of her senior campaign by stepping into a new role as a formidable three-event athlete, adding bars and floor to her repertoire.
Making the floor lineup has always been one of her long-term goals. “Coming into UCLA, I knew floor was what we were known for,” she said – but she also knew the roster was full of strong floor workers, and the lineup would be tough to crack. Injuries prevented her from training vault and floor in her freshman and sophomore seasons, so she focused her early-career efforts on beam, which had been her strongest event when she was competing in elite gymnastics.
Alipio began training floor again during her junior season, and going into preseason training for her senior year, she was determined to prove her readiness for a competitive floor debut.
“Because I don’t vault, I was able to take our vault days and spend a little extra time on floor and put in a few more numbers,” she said. “It got to the point where floor became so second nature.”
Throughout preseason training, Alipio began to regain the confidence and consistency she had had on floor during her elite career. Despite a “dip” where she worried she wasn’t ready to compete the event after all, head coach Janelle McDonald and associate head coach BJ Das helped assure Alipio that her hard work had prepared her well.
McDonald trusted that Alipio’s cool composure on beam would translate well to bars and floor. After a summer of working hard to refine routines, she had no doubt that Alipio’s routines would be part of the picture as she started to craft the Bruins’ lineups.
“As we were kind of getting some lineups locked in and things like that, Ciena was just steadily crushing her [bars and floor] skills over and over and over again,” said McDonald. “I felt very confident in her ability to raise her arms and get the job done. I think she’s proven that for four years on balance beam, which is arguably the hardest event to do that on.”
Alipio made her floor debut in week two with a 9.800, and broke into the bars lineup in week four with a 9.875. She’s since reached a mark of 9.950 on both events, and cemented herself as a key member of those lineups, along with being the beam anchor.
Alipio and McDonald both started their journeys at UCLA in the 2023 season. They’ve been through a lot together, and McDonald has watched Alipio grow from a quiet yet hard-working athlete to a strong and capable leader.
“To see that growth is really special, because I think that’s the growth you want to see so that when they leave here, they stand on their own two feet,” said McDonald. “Then they’re able to really make a positive impact in their next chapter, and I think Ciena is just so ready to do that.”
UCLA will celebrate its seniors at this Saturday’s home meet, and emotions are sure to be high. But the season isn’t over yet, and Alipio is ready to keep pushing. She wants the Bruins to “protect” their Big Ten Championship title, and she has her eyes on nationals in Fort Worth.
“We fight until the very end,” she said of her teammates. “It doesn’t matter what the other teams are doing, it doesn’t matter what the scores look like, we are fighting until there is no room to fight.”
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Article by Sophie Poirier
