Coach Brett Nelligan

Alex Zimmermann lay sprawled behind the vault horse, unable to move her neck. She had sprinted across the vault runway thousands of times, but this time, something went wrong.

Zimmermann, who had already committed to the Terrapins gymnastics team, was practicing with her club team, Skyline Gymnastics, about a year ago and overran the apparatus, landing on her neck. She broke not one, but both sides of a vertebrae, exponentially increasing her chances of being paralyzed.

But Zimmermann got lucky. She wasn’t paralyzed, her neck healed and she eventually resumed gymnastics activity. This weekend, she’ll compete for the Terps in a tri-meet at West Virginia tonight and a quad-meet at George Washington on Sunday.

“A lot of people, they would break their neck and it would be the end for them,” senior Ally Krikorian said. “It’s a scary thing to go back and compete. … For her to overcome every fear and every doubt she’s had to step up and compete for us is phenomenal.”

While Zimmermann didn’t lose the ability to walk, she almost considered walking away from the sport. Following the injury, she couldn’t even picture herself doing gymnastics without reliving the accident in her head.

She ultimately decided to give the sport another shot, though. She was cleared from rehab the day before the Terps began boot camp, and she started the rebuilding process.

But as the Terps began the regular season, coach Brett Nelligan elected not to include Zimmermann in any of the team’s starting rotations. Zimmermann, who had starred on her club team, had difficulty assuming the role of idle spectator.

“I didn’t like it at all,” Zimmermann said. “Seeing the team’s success, it really made me want to compete myself. So I worked in the gym, and I put some routines together.”

But after freshman phenom Kathy Tang went down Feb. 2 with an ankle injury, Nelligan called on Zimmermann to help fill Tang’s positions on vault and floor.

Filling in for Tang wasn’t an easy task, though. The freshman had taken the East Atlantic Gymnastics League by storm, winning conference Rookie of the Week multiple times. At the time of her injury, her 39.200 average score was good for No. 2 in the conference.

The Terps were putting together a stellar season, too. Before Tang went down, they boasted a near-perfect record and were ranked No. 15 in the nation.

But Nelligan felt confident turning to Zimmermann. After finally conquering her emotions, the freshman was ready to compete.

“The week before Kathy got hurt, she started to really figure it out,” Nelligan said. “Then when Kathy went down, she knew that was her shot. She took advantage of it. It showed her eagerness.”

And Zimmermann hasn’t let Nelligan down. She has competed in four of the Terps’ last five meets on floor and competed on vault in three of them. In her collegiate debut on Feb. 8, her floor score of 9.825 was the meet’s seventh-best, and her 9.700 on vault also ranked in the top 20.

The Sparrows Point native is the only freshman in the Terps’ vault and floor rotations, but Krikorian said Zimmermann has had no trouble acclimating to the college scene.

“She acted as if she had been competing the entire time,” Krikorian said. “Having that confidence really helped us build off of her because we could trust that she was going to hit her routines.”

With only two meets remaining until the conference championships, the Terps will need Zimmermann to continue to step up. After all, she is a key part of the squad’s two highest-scoring events.

She doesn’t lead the Terps in any statistical categories like Tang did, but she possesses an uncanny craving for competition that rubs off on her teammates — a craving fueled by her recognition of just how lucky she is.

“I was limited for everything,” Zimmermann said. “Just walking, especially doing the sport I love, I think about it every day, how grateful I am.”

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