When junior Sarah Faller fell to lead off beam in the final rotation of Sunday’s Big Five meet, the Terrapins gymnastics team was in danger.
Beam has given the team more problems than any event, but Faller has been steady. She hadn’t fallen once on the event this season.
But by the time sophomore Abbie Epperson performed the team’s final beam routine, she said she was so confident she was smiling throughout the routine.
Despite the fall from its most consistent performer, the Terps scored a season-high 49.00 on the event, bringing their overall score to a 195.50, tying their second-best mark of the season. Still, they finished in last place at the Big Five meet.
“We really just had to bring it out of ourselves,” Epperson said about beam. “It wasn’t easy, but we’re really good at what we do.”
Before Faller even stepped onto the beam, though, the Terps had already endured a surprise on the event. During warmups, freshman Shynelle Agaran felt dizzy, coach Brett Nelligan said, and had to be removed from the lineup.
Fellow freshman Megan McClelland, who had been pulled from the beam lineup after falling on the event last meet, replaced her. McClelland was inserted into the second lineup spot Sunday, directly after Faller.
“She probably never expected to follow a fall,” Nelligan said. “It was a big moment for her as a freshman. She had to grow up real fast.”
The Charlotte, North Carolina, native earned a 9.725.
“She did a great job stepping up and getting us back to our focus,” junior Emily Brauckmuller said.
After McClelland, the next four Terps also hit their routines, capped off by Epperson’s 9.85 from the anchor spot.
“I was so proud of the way [my teammates] responded from Sarah’s fall,” Epperson said. “It put me in a really good mood, I was ready to have fun.”
Nelligan said he hoped his team would build confidence from the way it performed on beam despite the fall from Faller. And throughout the meet as a whole, he thought the Terps handled the pressure of their first postseason meet well, especially considering their youth.
The Terps started the meet with one of their best performances of the year, a 49.15 on floor that featured four of six routines tying or setting a career high.
Brauckmuller—whose 9.85 on floor was a career-high—said she felt the team took that momentum into the next events, though the team’s scores dipped on vault and bars, where the team hit all of their routines.
“Step one is you have to hit,” Nelligan said, “and the next step is to increase all those little tenths.”
Sunday, those details are what kept the Terps from getting to “where [they] want to be,” Nelligan said.
The Terps’ 195.50 put them in last place at the Big Five meet, meaning they’ll compete at the morning session of next week’s Big Ten Championships. But the score will raise the team’s RQS, and they will remain on the bubble of the NCAA Tournament headed into the final meet of the season.
So even though Nelligan said the team’s performance showed them “moving in the right direction,” time may be running out.
CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story stated Megan McClelland posted a 9.825 on beam. She scored a 9.725 on the apparatus. This article has been updated to reflect this correction.
