In the seconds after the University of Alabama gymnastics team’s 196.7-196.4 loss to No. 10 Arkansas on Friday night, head coach Dana Duckworth was off the floor, on the radio and ready to move on. The two-time NCAA balance beam champion had just watched a potentially season-high meet for her team unravel with three falls from the beam. At that point, her message to the listeners was simple: learn from this and move on.
“The message is the next second is more important,” Duckworth said. “What’s done is done. In a joking way, it’s ‘So what, now what?’ because the next second is more important.”
The wheels came off slowly, then all at once for Alabama’s beam rotation. Freshman Avery Rickett took a dive on her first tumbling pass. She was unable to continue, had to be carried off by associate head coach Bryan Raschilla, and was scored a 6. With no more falls, it wouldn’t have mattered–Alabama would have at the very least sustained a lead built after season-high performances on vault and uneven bars. The team barely would have noticed.
“I don’t watch anyone before me,” sophomore Nickie Guerrero said. “It’s just how I stay in my zone. I just looked over and saw Bryan carrying her and I was just thinking, ‘Hopefully she’s OK but I can’t focus on it.’ I wanted to do it for my team, so that’s what I focused on.”
While Rickett received treatment, Duckworth took a moment to speak with junior Aja Sims before her routine. The gymnast focused, nodded, hopped on the apparatus, stitched together her elements, and scored a 9.95, the highest score for any routine that night.
The next routine, Lauren Beers fell. The routine after that, sophomore Kiana Winston joined her.
“I was standing at the end and saw it coming and thought ‘Either God’s going to put (Beers) back on the beam, or she’s going to struggle,’" Duckworth said. "That’s something fixable. We will use our resources, our videos and all the things we can do to get her more consistent with that specifically. But every time you have something like that experience where you’re disappointed because you made a mistake, it’s a great opportunity to learn from it by becoming more aware of why that mistake happened.”
A career-high 9.9 from Guerrero gave Alabama a 48.325, its lowest beam score since 2009. It would need near-perfection on the floor exercise, plus some help from Arkansas on the beam. Instead, the Razorbacks did what the Crimson Tide couldn’t, stringing together six routines with no falls for their best beam score of the season, a 49.225.
Only better than a 49.675 would have saved Alabama–much higher than any floor score by any team this season. It fell short, with a 49.375, its second-lowest score of the season.
“I didn’t know the final score until the very end of the meet, and honestly, that score is not a terrible score, based on what we actually did,” Duckworth said. “The disappointment is what we could have achieved. But what’s done is done and you can’t fix that. What you can do is go into the gym and take this opportunity to become better, more tough and learn from our mistakes.”
ALABAMA SCORES
Vault
Keely McNeer 9.875
Nickie Guerrero 9.9
Jenna Bresette 9.825
Katie Bailey 9.875
Kiana Winston 9.875
Lauren Beers 9.875
Uneven Bars
Keely McNeer 9.825
Amanda Jetter 9.875
Katie Bailey 9.825
Lauren Beers 9.825
Kiana Winston 9.9
Mackenzie Brannan 9.875
Balance Beam
Keely McNeer 9.85
Avery Rickett 6.0
Aja Sims 9.95
Lauren Beers 9.35
Kiana Winston 9.275
Nickie Guerrero 9.9
Floor Exercise
Aja Sims 9.875
Nickie Guerrero 9.825
Amanda Jetter 9.925
Ariana Guerra 9.65
Lauren Beers 9.9
Mackenzie Valentin 9.85
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