The Terrapins gymnastics team has turned in its three best scores of the season at home, but they haven’t been enough to come away with victories.
With just two meets left at Xfinity Center this season, the Terps will look to notch their first victory at home when Penn State visits College Park on Monday night.
The matchup with the Nittany Lions (2-5, 2-2 Big Ten) comes just three days after the Terps’ 196.15–194.425 loss to No. 11 Arkansas. It was the second consecutive meet that the Terps (2-7, 0-4) were unable to overcome multiple missteps on beam.
Coach Brett Nelligan said the quick turnaround could be a blessing for his team, as it won’t have time to dwell on mistakes, and the gymnasts echoed those sentiments.
“My No. 1 feeling whenever I fall or mess up is that I want to just get back up right now,” said sophomore Abbie Epperson, who has fallen in two straight meets.
Another reason Nelligan said he’s not worried about the tight scheduling is that it’s coming later in the campaign.
“At this point of the season, it’s a mental game,” Nelligan said. “We’re just trying to manage their confidence and their mental strength, and they’ll be ready to go Monday.”
Which gymnasts will be called upon against Penn State, though, is still up in the air.
Despite being more than halfway through the season, Nelligan hasn’t settled on a set lineup for any event but floor, which has included the same six gymnasts since the season-opening meet.
The most fluid lineup has been beam, where the team has tried four different lineups in the six meets and could see a fifth on Monday after back-to-back low scores.
The Terps have struggled to find a sixth gymnast that can consistently hit her routine on bars and have had the same problem on vault.
Earlier in the year, Nelligan said he hopes for lineups to become set about halfway through the year, but that hasn’t happened. It’s translated to low team scores.
The team’s highest score of the season came Jan. 31 in a 196.275–195.50 loss at home against Iowa. Nelligan thought that meet could have been his team “clicking in,” but it hasn’t broken 195.00 since. They’re not missing by much, though, he said.
“We’re one or two routines away from bringing home a big win,” Nelligan said.
The team hasn’t picked up a win since its first meet of the season, which Nelligan said is a result of strong opponents. The low scores, though, Nelligan has a tougher time figuring out.
The team is young, but Nelligan still said many of the mistakes made during competition are uncharacteristic.
“It’s a little heartbreaking,” Epperson said. “We still have two more [home meets] to prove ourselves, so hopefully we can accomplish that.”
And Nelligan remains optimistic they can do that.
“Our expectation is to come in here and finish the job that we started,” Nelligan said. “We just need to push ourselves right over this little ledge that we have.”
