Twenty five years later, University of Alabama gymnastics coach Dana Duckworth remembers exactly when she learned her lesson about the balance beam.
"It was my sophomore year at the national championship in 1991 when I was competing for a national beam title,” Duckworth said. “I was getting ready to do my dismount, and I got ahead of myself. I said, right before I dismounted 'Dana, you just did a perfect routine.' I proceeded to go roundoff, flip-flop, and fall on my face in front of 15,000 people. I was mortified."
Duckworth–then Dobransky– was fresh off a 9.85 performance on the balance beam a day earlier that had helped power her team to the 1991 national championship, but blew her first chance at an NCAA individual title.
That faceplanted dismount, however, set her up for later success. Duckworth won back-to-back individual titles in 1992 and 1993. Now, as coach of a team with a high balance beam ceiling but struggling to find consistency, she hopes she can pass that lesson on.
"I had a choice,” Duckworth said. “Put my head in the sand, 'woe is me,' self-pity. Or, you know what? Get back up and do your job. So that summer and that preparation, I never did a beam routine again until my feet hit the ground that I thought I was done. And I never stopped being 'in the moment.' That's what I'm trying to teach. Some people get that and some just need a little more practice. But we'll get there.”
Alabama owns the highest score on balance beam in the country so far this season, a 49.55 scored against Florida, but the team also carries marks of 48.325, 49 and 49.15. Duckworth said the inconsistency on beam is the biggest component holding the team back from competing with the best in the country.
"I'm not happy,” Duckworth said. “I woke up Saturday morning (after recording a 49 against Kentucky) and my husband said 'why are you in a bad mood?' I said 'because I feel like we lost.' And it wasn't that we lost. We lost an opportunity to have a huge score, and you don't want to do that.”
Senior Lauren Beers has been a microcosm of the team’s beam struggles this season. One of the team’s all-around stalwarts, Beers owns a season-high mark of 9.95, but has fallen in two of her last three meets.
“Lauren's going to be fine,” Duckworth said. “Lauren and I have talked many hours now on the fact that 'Listen, go have some fun. Go enjoy what you're doing. This is not a job.'”
In all likelihood, Alabama’s 117-meet winning streak against Auburn will come down to its balance beam performance, where the Crimson Tide will close Friday’s meet. To extend that streak, the team will need to show the resiliency there that it shows on uneven bars or floor exercise after an error, Duckworth said.
“We go to the beam and we have to be more mentally tough,” Duckworth said. “It doesn't matter if there's a mistake in front of you, behind you or two people from you. You have to go up there with the mentality that 'I've got my team's back.' You have to. We just need to do it. And we're going to do it this weekend."
l
