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Kristen Parker gets a hug from assistant coach Chris Waller after completing her floor routine at

One mark of a great gymnast lies in the ability to win championships. The same holds true for coaches. This past weekend in Lincoln, Neb., the UCLA women’s gymnastics team, led by five seniors, captured its third title in four years.

It was not the first UCLA gymnastics championship, but for first-year coaches Chris Waller and Carly Raab, it was the first title of their UCLA coaching careers.

In 1987, Chris Waller was a starry-eyed freshman competing as part of a powerful and talented UCLA men’s gymnastics team. The Bruins captured the NCAA title that year, and he has been on the championship bandwagon ever since, capturing either a U.S. or NCAA title every year from 1989 to 1993.

Fast forward to 2002, when an assistant coaching position opened up for the UCLA women’s team. Head coach Valorie Kondos Field approached Waller, who again became a starry-eyed freshman involved with a powerful and talented UCLA gymnastics team. Only this time he was coaching instead of competing.

Alongside Waller was another first-year coach – undergraduate assistant Carly Raab – a member of UCLA’s renowned Fab Five. Both were given the privilege of working with a talented UCLA team.

“When you are a freshman in anything, if you just focus on your job there are fewer distractions,” Waller said. “I think it’s important when you come in as a new coach that you don’t force your style or your coaching on the gymnasts. You have to get to know them and their gymnastics, and watch and listen more than coach for a while.”

For Raab, the task of getting to know each gymnast was not difficult. As a freshman, Raab was part of the Fab Five recruiting class that would elevate UCLA gymnastics to the best in the nation for the next four years. However, Raab’s path to her senior season differs from that of the other four members of the Fab Five.

Last year, multiple knee injuries throughout her collegiate career forced Raab to make a decision on whether to persevere and risk permanent injury or give up the sport she loved and move on.

“The hardest thing was having to put a value on my health and my knee versus the value of my passion for the sport,” Raab said. “How do I choose my knee over something I love to do every day? Ultimately you say ‘Well, I want to have a knee when I’m 40.’”

Raab was forced to injury-retire, a fate every college gymnast fears. But she took the fork in the road that led to the world of coaching, lending her experience to a staff that included Kondos Field and second-year assistant Milo Johnson.

“There’s no one who loves the sport more than Carly. I wish that I was able to give her my knee so that she would be able to compete again,” junior Jamie Dantzscher said.

“When I found out that she was going to stay around and coach I was extremely happy, because if Carly wasn’t there this year, there definitely would have been a huge piece missing.”

The two first-year coaches are quick to acknowledge how lucky they are to be given the opportunity of molding and shaping some of the most talented gymnasts in the world.

“I’m just fortunate altogether,” Waller said. “I’m a lucky person. For one, I’m a Bruin; I’ve already been there. Secondly, I’m an Olympian, and they know me from being an Olympian. I walked in with probably more respect than a lot of other people would have, so that helped.”

“(Kondos Field) allowed me to have this opportunity, and I am so lucky that she did that,” Raab said. “She didn’t need to give me this opportunity at all.”

While Raab had spent the previous three years of her life as a member of the UCLA gymnastics family, Waller would have to gain the trust and respect of both gymnasts and coaches. If anyone was up to the task, it was Waller, who said that coaching gymnastics is his calling in life.

“Once you know the athlete you can say things that make sense to them and affect them, and that will make them listen,” Waller said. “That is how you gain their respect. Once they know that you have taken the time to listen and understand them and respond to their technical and emotional needs, they gain trust in you.”

Acceptance came quickly and easily for Waller, who has become so involved in UCLA gymnastics one would think he has been coaching the Bruins for years.

And that suits him just fine.

“I hope to be here for a long time,” Waller said. “It’s my family, it’s where I became an athlete. It is just unbelievable that I get the opportunity to come back to where I became an Olympian and an NCAA champion.”

As for Raab, when she considers the fact that she can wear three NCAA championship rings on one hand, she knows she has been a part of something special.

“This was the most rewarding national championship I’ve ever been a part of because I’m so close to everybody on this team,” Raab said.

“I love being a part of this sport from a different perspective. It’s been so much more rewarding than I thought it was going to be,” Raab said.

With new rings on their fingers, each UCLA gymnast fortunate enough to be mentored by the two freshmen phenom coaches feels just as lucky as Raab and Waller.