The feeling was all too familiar. For its second consecutive meet, the North Carolina gymnastics squad headed into the floor exercise feeling disappointed about its inconsistency on the balance beam.
Coach Derek Galvin had known his team needed to put up competitive scores on the balance beam to place in the top three of the East Atlantic Gymnastics League Championship — but yet again, he walked away feeling disappointed, and his team walked away with a fifth-place finish overall.
“Balance beam just wasn’t what we were planning,” Galvin said.
“The first four people up on beam did a good job, and we just couldn’t close it out. That was the difference for us finishing in the top two or three versus finishing fifth,” Galvin said.
But Galvin also knew that for the second consecutive meet, his athletes would bounce back and channel the disappointment from beam into dominant floor exercises.
And they did.
“When they came back on floor they did a great job, had some of the best routines we’ve had this year,” Galvin said. “The team was fighting to keep in the meet, we didn’t want to finish in the bottom two — that’s for sure— and so they were able to work their way back up.”
UNC finished the league championship with 194.225 points and a fifth place finish, falling behind N.C. State, Maryland, Pittsburgh and George Washington. The squad defeated New Hampshire, Rutgers and Towson in part due to the efforts of freshman Lexi Cappalli and senior Elizabeth Durkac.
Durkac was named the league’s co-gymnast of the year.
