How does the OU women's gymnastics team bounce back from its first loss? 'Practice is where you address it'
NORMAN — After last week’s surprising 197.775-196.650 loss at Utah, the No. 4 OU women’s gymnastics team travels to Tucson, Arizona, to take on No. 13 Stanford, No. 20 Arizona and No. 22 Utah State beginning at 5 p.m. Saturday.
Utah State was a late addition after the Aggies’ meet with Boise State was wiped out.
Sooners coach K.J. Kindler spoke with The Oklahoman about how her team has responded to the loss, the emergence of freshman Jordan Bowers and Olivia Trautman's timetable for return:
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Question: How do you bounce back from last week’s performance?
Answer: Two-thirds of our routines are freshmen and sophomores, so that’s a huge, very young group. But very expected having lost Anastasia (Webb) and Maggie (Nichols) in the last two years — two really strong athletes for us. But in terms of how we’re addressing it, we talked about the fact that practice is where you address it. You don’t get to the meet and try to fix things. You fix them this week. So when we got into that gym the first day, that was kind of the speech. … At the end of the meet, I said, "You guys have been great, great winners lots of times. Today, we need to be great losers. And we need to learn how to bounce back and make the adjustments necessary to be better next time."
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What are your impressions of freshman Jordan Bowers through the first two meets?
She’s exactly what I expected her to be. I don’t know that we’ve had a freshman with the exception of Maggie Nichols that came out and scored so high right out of the gate. We’ve definitely had amazing all-arounders over the course and history of this program but she’s showing how special she is right away. … I’m just really excited about her future. She’s doing a phenomenal job.
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How difficult is it to insert a freshman into a role that big that early?
It’s a challenge and I did talk to Maggie (now a student coach for the Sooners) about it when we came back because she was in the same position. I think the transition of going from being a high school gymnast to being a collegiate gymnast is huge because you’re very individually minded. You’re thinking about your all-around score and how that works and quite honestly, if an event doesn’t go the way you want, that is already botched. You can’t salvage that all-around score if you have an event that’s rough. So our all-arounders need to learn that every event we go to is a fresh start for them vs. them thinking about that personal total at the end because it’s about the team so that transition to being team-minded and also not being disappointed in yourself and moving on is something that’s definitely mental and something that every all-arounder has to work on. … I don’t know if anyone remembers but (Nichols) was slated to win the all-around (as a freshman) and that pressure really got to her and she ended up missing the last event. She was nailing that meet and she put too much pressure on herself. She learned how to become a little bit more team-minded and to let that stuff go a little more and it allowed her to be more successful as an individual as well.
Do you have an update on Olivia Trautman’s recovery and a possible timetable for her return after she suffered a preseason injury?
I wish I could give you a projection. Certainly she’s hoping to compete this year, and we are hoping she competes this year but it’s been a little bit of a slow road and it’s really uncertain. The hope is postseason she would be out there.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU women's gymnastics: Sooners' look to bounce back on trip to Arizona
