“Dream big, bold, audacious, and borderline crazy.”
Speaking before a throng of thousands at the University of Arkansas’ Spring 2025 commencement for its Colleges of Education and Health Professions, Valorie Kondos Field urged graduates to keep those words in mind when crafting their goals for the future.
“Someone is going to do something extraordinary in your lifetime,” the former UCLA gymnastics head coach told the Razorbacks. “It might as well be you.”
Kondos Field, who has taught in UCLA’s Transformative Coaching and Leadership program since 2019, recounted her unconventional coaching journey to the crowd at Bud Walton Arena.
Originally hired as the team’s choreographer, the former ballerina was shocked when, several years later, she was asked to lead the program as head coach. With almost no experience in coaching—or leadership—she accepted the role, fully aware she was in over her head.
“Thankfully there was no social media back then,” Kondos Field joked. “I was so inept at the job I was asked to do that I didn’t see the absurdity of it all.
“All I remember thinking was: ‘I wonder how long it’s going to take me to win a national championship?’ — something UCLA gymnastics had never accomplished at the time.”
It was Big, Bold, and Audacious.
Thirty years later, Kondos Field was named Pac-12 Coach of the Century, following a string of national championships—seven in total. Along the way, she mentored multiple Olympians and helped set a new standard for collegiate gymnastics.
But she never would have reached that metaphorical mountaintop had she not first learned to “embrace the suck.”
“I set myself up for massive heartache and struggle,” she admitted. “Not to mention the constant battle with the demons of imposter syndrome.”
Yet the young Bruin coach chose to lean into the difficulty.
“Easy doesn’t take grit, or resilience, or discipline, or courage,” she said. “No champion has ever been made from easy. Champions are made in the struggle.
“The truth is, we were never promised easy,” she added. “But every boulder in life is an opportunity to flex.”
The 7,000-plus graduation attendees in Fayetteville were up and dancing by the conclusion of her keynote address.
“The truth is there have been over 180 billion people on this planet,” she told them.
“And of those 180 million people, there has never been another you.
“Be your own GOAT.”
WATCH Kondos Field’s full commencement speech.
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