Before the NCAA Athens Regional this past weekend, Terrapins gymnastics coach Brett Nelligan strayed from his usual philosophy.
Instead of urging sophomore Abbie Epperson and freshman Macey Roberts to look inward and concentrate on what they can control, he asked them to take in their surroundings.
“I want you to sit and look around,” Nelligan told them. “I want you to bring some of this home for us.”
The rest of the team — aside from senior Kathy Tang, who was also
competing — was home. For the first time since 2008, the Terps didn’t qualify as a team for the regional.
Still, there were some highlights from the season to look back on.
“There were points throughout this season that they blew our expectations away,” Nelligan said. “We’re going to be sad to see Kathy go, but looking forward, we’re only losing one senior.”
That’s a stark contrast from a year ago, when the Terps lost six seniors from a 2015 team that tied for the program’s second-best finish at a regional.
As a result, the Terps were young this year. Tang was one of just three seniors on the team, and both of her classmates medically retired before competing in a meet.
Tang, though, performed well. Even when her younger teammates struggled, the Agawam, Massachusetts, native was a bright spot for the Terps in her final season. On vault, bars and floor — events she competed on in nearly every meet — Tang scored lower than a 9.7 just twice.
“I feel like I did my part with this program,” Tang said.”I’m really happy with what I’ve done the past four years, but it’s definitely bittersweet.”
Tang stepped into more of a leadership role in her final year. While she would have liked to qualify for regionals as a team, the senior saw plenty of positives in the 2016 campaign.
“I told the girls after [the Big Ten Championship] that I was really proud of how they fought throughout the season,” Tang said. “This is a learning experience, and it’s only going to help us in the future.”
Nelligan admitted that the youth and inexperience of the team meant he “wasn’t really sure” what to expect entering the season, but said not qualifying for regionals for the first time in his tenure was “heartbreaking.”
Still, they showed flashes of potential, managing to break 196.00 during a quad meet at George Washington and hitting 195.50 at two other competitions.
Entering the Big Ten Championships, the Terps were on the bubble to finish in the top 36 nationally. They suffered two falls on beam, though, and earned a 194.025, their second-lowest score of the season.
Even at times even when the Terps weren’t falling during routines, their scores weren’t always stellar. After the Big Five Meet, where the Terps didn’t count a fall, Nelligan said the team had to keep moving forward.
“This is step one; you have to hit your routines,” Nelligan said. “The next step is to increase all those little tenths.”
But his team didn’t make the strides it needed to sneak into the postseason.
So on Saturday in Athens, Georgia, Nelligan wasn’t telling a dozen of his gymnasts to ignore any outside distractions and stay within their own mind.
He was telling two of them to soak in as much as they could, in hopes of passing some of the memories to their teammates for the future.
“I missed my team a lot,” Epperson said. “Having this experience was a great day for us [three], but like I said, I just wish they were here.”
