JACKSONVILLE — Of all places for a rally to begin, Florida’s march to the Southeastern Conference gymnastics championship got its start on the balance beam, a place where championship hopes have so often gone to die a rather cruel death over the past five years. Now that’s not to say there wasn’t a certain amount of drama involved — when a gymnast who hasn’t fallen off the beam all year goes to the mat not once, but twice you’re up to your ears in drama — but this was a night for exorcising some of those old demons.
In winning their first SEC championship since 2007, the Gators never blinked when freshman Liz Green fell off the beam twice after four straight Florida gymnasts had hit their routine. In years past, that’s the kind of mishap that had a devastating ripple effect on Rhonda Faehn’s team, but not this year and not on this night.
The reason?
The Gators knew SEC Freshman of the Year Ashanee Dickerson was next up and Dickerson never blinks.
“She’s been a machine all year long, somebody that we can always say we know she’s going to hit,” said Faehn, the 2010 SEC Coach of the Year. “After Liz … that was fluky. She has never fallen all year and all of a sudden she went up there [and falls]. She’s won so many beam titles but with Ashanee going after her … I just looked into her eyes and I could see she was doing to hit. She knew what she had to do and then for her to stick her double back dismount on to p of it was icing on the cake. I was just really proud of the way she handled that as a freshman.”
Dickerson, performing in front of a hometown crowd of 5,628, showed no emotion whatsoever as she went through her entire routine with only microscopic mistakes for a rock solid 9.925 that gave the Gators a 49.400, the best team score on the beam the entire evening. Dickerson said it was simply a matter of going through the routine in her mind beforehand and then blocking everything out except what she had to do move by move.
“I never watch the routines before I go,” Dickerson said. “I just go through the routine in my head and I talk to myself while I’m doing my routine and I knew I had to stick the dismount. I just do the best I can do every day and hope it’s a good one.”
The moment she stuck her dismount, the large contingent of Florida fans went semi-ballistic and the emotion carried over into the floor routine. The Gators had momentum and there was no emotional letdown. That couldn’t be said for Georgia, Florida’s old nemesis.
At the 2008 NCAA meet in Athens, the Gators had their sights set on a national championship when they were done in on the beam. Georgia used that opening to nail five straight beam routines to go to claim the title and end Florida’s hopes. Saturday night in Jacksonville, it was Georgia that blinked. The usually steady Hilary Mauro fell and Courtney McCool, who needed a big score to pull out the SEC title for the GymDogs bobbled two times and nearly fell off.
This time it was Florida’s turn to seize the moment. Finishing up on the floor, all six Gators hit their routines with four 9.875s (Liz Green, Amy Ferguson, Dickerson and Marissa King) counting along with Maranda Smith’s 9.90.
“The energy and momentum carried onto floor,” Faehn said. “That was the best floor routine I’ve ever seen from Liz and Amy and Randy (Stageberg) … it was one after another. Marissa’s double layout was just ridiculously good.”
And, it wasn’t the only adversity the Gators had to overcome. Starting out on vault, Florida turned in an uncharacteristically low 49.125, which put them in a rally mode the rest of the way.
Florida bounced back with a 49.125 on the bars, not a great performance but steady and consistent and enough to bring them within .050 of five-time defending NCAA champion Georgia (98.300) and tied UF with Alabama (98.250), the nation’s number one-ranked team coming into Saturday’s conference championship meet.
“That was probably one of our worst vault performances of the year and instead of our athletes looking at that and saying oh my goodness we’ve already lost … we don’t have a chance, they dug deeper and they came out on bars and were on fire, going for everything. I said go for your handstands. Don’t hold anything back.”
The rally began when Courtney Gladys scored a 9.9 to lead off on the beam, the first of three 9.9 or better scores for the Gators, who got a 9.850 from Elizabeth Mahlich, a 9.825 from Rebekah Zaiser, and a 9.90 from King. With Green stepping up next, the Gators had every reason to feel confident but then she fell twice.
Smith admitted that maybe for a moment, there were here we go again thoughts for the Gators but those were tempered with the confidence the entire team has in Dickerson, who scored a 39.450 to finish second in the all-around.
“I’m sure everyone was saying ‘no, no, no’ but I have so much confidence in Ashanee because she works so hard every day in the gym,” Smith said. “I knew she was going to hit a great routine.”
While Dickerson came through to seal the night’s best team performance on the beam, which gave Florida a .050 lead going into the final rotation, Faehn had to work on Green to make sure her talented freshman didn’t allow the fall on the beam to carry over to her floor routine.
“I was shocked by Liz simply because that’s uncharacteristic of her,” Faehn said. “I told her when she was done ‘you’re going to throw that away and ignore it … you’re going to do the best floor routine you’ve ever done before’ and she said, ‘yes I will” and she did. That’s the sign of a true competitor. They’re not going to carry that mistake on to the next event.”
Green led off with a 9.875 on the floor, a positive ripple, which only grew into a championship tidal wave as the Gators not only hit their routines but actually expanded their lead. To win the SEC by not only beating Georgia but the #1-ranked team in the nation in Alabama made winning the SEC even more special for Smith, who transferred to Florida from UCLA a couple of years ago.
“This is beyond cool,” she said. “We’ve worked for this all season and during preseason and to just come out here and fight to the end just shows what this team is capable of doing.”
What the Gators are capable of doing is winning their first ever NCAA championship. By taking the SEC, they will be one of the favorites to win it all, particularly since the NCAA championships are in Gainesville at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.