A quietness filled Xfinity Center on Monday night as junior Sarah Faller led off for the Terrapins gymnastics team on beam. The song blaring over the arena speakers, usually top-40 pop, turned to a piano cover of a slow Adele song.
“I’m not watching,” freshman Macey Roberts said with her back turned to the event. “I’m not watching.”
Another teammate paced back and forth as Faller performed, letting out a nervous smile. The sound of Faller’s feet landing on the rubber mats below the beam followed by the team and its fans erupting, broke the silence.
The next five Terps also hit their beam routines, earning them a season-high 48.90 on the event, a significant step forward after the team suffered two falls on the apparatus in each of its last two meets. The Terps improved on their overall score from those meets as well, but fell to Penn State, 196.35–195.35.
“That [beam] rotation was like medicine for us,” coach Brett Nelligan said. “That gave us life.”
For the first time this year, the Terps went 24-for-24 on routines, not having a single gymnast fall on an event.
As big as Faller’s and the rest of the team’s beam performances were, the turning point may have come on the previous rotation, bars.
The team’s first two bar routines earned scores below 9.70. After the Terps had struggled on vault to begin the meet, they seemed to be in danger of another letdown performance at home.
But then, the Terps (2-8, 0-5 Big Ten) caught fire. The remaining four gymnasts all scored a 9.75 or better, capped off by senior Kathy Tang’s season-high 9.85. The Terps finished the event with a 48.875.
Earlier, though, Tang had been a big factor in the Terps’ low vault score.
Tang took a large step after landing her vault, and the judges gave her a 9.50. On the 33 previous vaults Tang’s performed in her career, her lowest score was a 9.75. Nelligan thought the uncharacteristic performance could have to do with Tang feeling under the weather.
But like they did on bars, the Terps were able to make up for Tang’s low score.
Sophomore Evelyn Nee, the final Terp to compete on vault, had to wait while the judges worked out Tang’s score. The same thing happened last week, when she earned a 9.575, so Nee said she was ready for the delay this time.
“I actually have to not think about [doing the routine] so much,” Nee said. “So I just try to think of something else and then I go.”
For the past couple weeks, Nelligan has preached hitting all four events at each meet. And after the short break from Friday’s loss to Arkansas, Nee hit a career high 9.7, preventing the Terps from having an even lower scoring first rotation.
“At the beginning, we just made a decision that we were going to be mentally tough tonight,” Nelligan said. “We were going to break through these barriers that we’d set up for ourselves.”
The Terps finished the meet on floor, where they carried the momentum from beam and once again had a strong performance on what’s become their most consistent event. They earned a 49.00 on the final event to score better than 195.00 for just the second time this season.
Despite beating their previous two scores by nearly a full point, though, the Terps couldn’t pick up their first home win of the season, as the Nittany Lions (4-5, 3-2) came out on top.
“I know we didn’t get the win, but more importantly, we got healthy mentally,” Nelligan said. “I thought for us, mentally, we needed to break back over that 195.00.”
