With one meet under their belts, UF coach Jenny Rowland and her team can finally take a step back and breathe.
Season-opening meets don’t normally come with a great deal of pressure in gymnastics, a sport in which you’re expected to be far from perfect early on and one that doesn’t regard regular season wins and losses with too much significance.
But this season is different for the Gators.
Losing former coach Rhonda Faehn has created an enormous amount of change for a program coming off of three consecutive national titles, and it has made helping the gymnasts adapt to change — as well as determining what not to change — Rowland’s number one priority.
The transition has been smooth throughout the offseason, but nothing can replace a first experience together under the competition's lights like Friday night’s win over Texas Woman’s University.
The win and the performance weren’t the important elements, though.
The most crucial element was the coach and athletes beginning to figure each other out.
"This was a first of many firsts," Rowland said of the meet. "This was the first time they’ve been in a competition with myself. It’s the first time I was able to observe how they compete, what their little quirks are.
"It was just a great experience overall."
While the coach and her team have gotten to know each other over the past few months, the meet marked Rowland's first taste of live action with her new UF team, and more importantly, her team got its first taste of how the coach handles that live action with something actually at stake.
For a group of athletes used to doing things a certain way under Faehn — with great success — discovering how different Rowland’s methods would look out on the competition floor was an important and stressful step.
"(In) training, they know who I am, I know who they are" Rowland said. "But it’s always new when you get out on the competition floor."
After Friday’s win, though, the gymnasts got a feel for how competitions will be handled and what they can expect in the future.
With that out of the way, Florida can now shift its focus away from procedural changes and onto something much more fun: competing.
"I think for them now moving forward, they can just completely relax," Rowland said, "enjoy what they love doing, have a good time and improve upon what was already a great meet."
The team won’t be able to relax too much, however, particularly as the season slate gets much more daunting.
With a stretch of six straight meets against teams ranked in the top 16, the Gators will have every opportunity to measure themselves against the best teams in the country.
Follow Graham Hack on Twitter @graham_hack24
Alex McMurtry performs her balance beam routine during Florida's win against Georgia on Jan. 30, 2015.
