Benefield: Heidi Moneymaker, newest member of UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame, got her start at Santa Rosa’s Montgomery High

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jackie Robinson. Florence Griffith-Joyner. Arthur Ashe. Troy Aikman. Lisa Fernandez. Jimmy Connors. Gail Devers. Jill Ellis. Rafer Johnson. Santa Rosa’s own Jerry Robinson. Jackie Joyner-Kersee. John Wooden.

That is a small sliver of names of the people who have been inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame

And now, add to that list: Heidi Moneymaker.

Raised in Santa Rosa and a Montgomery High School graduate, Moneymaker, 45, has been voted into the 2023 class of inductees of one of the most sterling collegiate athletic halls of fame on the planet.

As a Bruin, Moneymaker led two NCAA gymnastics title teams and brought home a haul of All-American honors, individual national titles and Pac-10 (now Pac-12) awards in the late 1990s.

"Being part of the UCLA athletic family is one thing, being in the Hall of Fame is like royalty,“ said legendary UCLA gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos Field, herself a Bruins Hall of Famer.

“She is one of those athletes who would have been great at any other sport. She would have dominated,” said Kondos Field, who is known to her athletes as “Miss Val.” “She was beyond disciplined.”

So disciplined, in fact, that Moneymaker was fully focused on a work project when the calls from UCLA started coming in to tell her of the honor.

She didn’t pick up. Repeatedly.

But Moneymaker’s work isn’t like yours or mine.

Since graduating from UCLA with a degree in history, Moneymaker has worked her way into the business of stunt doubling in major films.

Today she’s a big name in the industry.

Beginning in 2009, Moneymaker has been the stunt double hand-picked by Scarlett Johansson to act beside her in the role of “Black Widow” in the Avenger series.

It has since become a family business of sorts.

Moneymaker’s sister Renae, who was a gymnast at San Jose State, did all of the stunt double work for Jennifer Lawrence in “The Hunger Games” movies.

“I have a tribe situation,” Moneymaker said. “My sister Renae, she’s one of the biggest (in the stunt business), my brother-in-law also, and my dad. It’s really great, this family unit. My parents travel with us.”

So, while working on a project in Atlanta when her phone was popping with messages from the UCLA athletic department, she let them go to voicemail.

Then her former coach Kondos Field, called. This call she took.

“She called me and said, ‘Hey, they are trying to get a hold of you and I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s a good thing and you want to call them back,’” she said.

The athletic department was calling to let Moneymaker know she was joining the ranks of Jackie Robinson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

Heady stuff.

“I’m a little, not disconnected, but a little distanced from that time, so when that call came around I was a little bit in rightful shock,” she said.

Now that it’s sunk in a little bit?

“I’m honored and humbled and grateful,” she said.

Moneymaker, along with seven other athletes and coaches, will be feted at a dinner and ceremony on campus Oct. 6 and again the following day where they will be honored at halftime of the UCLA vs. Washington State football game.

And when she lets herself go there, she realizes ― and appreciates ― the resume she, and her Bruins teammates, built.

Moneymaker was an 11-time All American. Her Bruins teams won not one, but two, NCAA team titles. Moneymaker won two individual titles and was the first Bruin in school history to win an uneven bars title and won the national vault title a year later.

She was the first UCLA gymnast to earn the maximum five first-team All-American honors in a single year.

As a senior she was named Pac-10 Gymnast of the Year.

As icing on the proverbial career cake, she was named to the Pac-12 Team of the Century.

“Any team would love to have 10 Heidi Moneymakers on the team,” Kondos Field said. “She reeks of competitiveness. Heidi loves to compete. She was born not just with this amazing talent and body structure, but this competitiveness.”

I ask Kondos Field for an example.

“She sprained her ankles a few days before the Pac-10 championship, literally like a day before,” she said. “So we were like, ‘OK, Heidi is out …’ and she says ‘Oh no. I’m not out. Just ice me up.’”

“She’s one in a million,” she said.

Ask Kondos Field and she’ll tell you Moneymaker could have excelled at any sport she tried. She’s that driven, she’s that athletic.

But ask Moneymaker and it was all gymnastics, all the time. She was made for it.

She recalled growing up in her Santa Rosa home and running her parents ragged with her energy.

“I had so much energy, I would never sleep, I was hyper, running around,” she said.

Her parents tried to corral her a bit. They put her in the top bunk, piled some toys around her and removed the ladder.

That’ll do the trick, so went the thinking.

But instead of hunkering down with her toys, Moneymaker saw an opportunity. She took flight.

She landed nose first on a chair, but that’s beside the point.

At about that time, Moneymaker’s parents found their daughter a gymnastics gym. It was a match made in athletic heaven.

“You are in this place with all these other kids and I get to do all the things I’m doing at home but in a padded, soft area, where you could jump off things and land in a foam pit,” she said. “It was a big, humongous gym and it was safer so I could do even more than that.”

The gym was a place she could marry both strength and grace.

Her commitment was as fierce as her competitiveness.

Starting around age 12, she was in the gym twice a day, hours at a time. Same thing when she matriculated to Montgomery and colleges started to come calling.

“I really wanted to stay in the Pac-10,” she said. “I didn’t want to go too far from home.”

When she visited Westwood, when she spent time with Kondos Field, Moneymaker knew UCLA was for her, that Kondos Field was going to be her coach. It just fit.

“UCLA is where I was supposed to be,” she said.

In October, UCLA gets to say thank you to Moneymaker, for her dedication, for her drive, for her results.

UCLA was where Moneymaker was supposed to be as a collegian and it’s where her name will remain, among the greats, for all time.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.