Gymnastics: Panthers hope for perfect dismount to solid season

On the second floor of Trees Hall, audible cheering emanates from beyond a series of basketball courts and behind a closed set of double doors. Above the doors is an iconic image of a gymnast in mid-routine on a balance beam.

But does she stick the landing?

That question is all Pitt gymnastics head coach Debbie Yohman wonders about — not so much for the girl on the sign, but certainly for the team.

Yohman dubbed the Panthers’ 2012-2013 season “The Year of the Stick,” an abbreviated but powerful reminder for the gymnasts to perfect their dismounts. If the audible cheering from behind closed doors is any indicator, Coach Yohman’s message has, appropriately, stuck.

As Yohman described it, the perfect dismount, a “stuck” landing, involves three decisive points: acute levelness at and above the shoulders, carefully bent knees and holding the complete position. Finish a flawless routine with those painstaking minutiae, and the result should be an unblemished score.

“We’re trying to clean up those routines all the way through the end by sticking every dismount,” said Yohman, leader of the Pitt gymnastics team for the past 27 seasons. “It’s an added reminder to the kids on a daily basis of what we’re striving for — that last bit of perfection.”

Pitt also strives for an ideal season, one that meets the team’s larger goals of winning the East Atlantic Gymnastics League (EAGL) Championship and qualifying for NCAA Regional Championships.

Veteran coaching

Petite in stature but towering in terms of presence, Coach Yohman keeps the team level. with her experience and authoritative demeanor.

Because of class-schedule conflicts, some girls warm up before practice officially starts and begin rehearsing their routines, prompting subsequent cheers from other teammates who have just witnessed a smooth run-through on the uneven bars.

The majority of the 17-gymnast team arrives to practice just before its scheduled start at 1:30 p.m. They enter beaming with smiles, many in mid-conversation and donning either a pink or navy Pitt shirt. Junior Brittney Harris runs to switch on a black radio that sits on a stand in front of a wall consisting of five panels of mirrors. Before Harris can return to the cluster of gymnasts sitting patiently on the center mat, Coach Yohman yells out, “Brit, why don’t you turn that down for a second, please.” Harris obliges.

Yohman, her sandy-blonde straight hair falling just past the shoulders of her navy blue Pitt track jacket, commands the quieted room as she begins reviewing the itinerary for an upcoming weekend meet.

The 2013 version of the Panthers are among the best of Yohman’s tenure, posting a 13-9 record thus far, cracking the top 25 of the national rankings earlier in the season and recently recording the third-best team score in school history during a victory over North Carolina at the Fitzgerald Field House.

But Yohman, who as a gymnast helped Clarion University win a national championship in 1976 before beginning her lengthy coaching career, is no stranger to success. In her tenure at Pitt, she has overseen some of the best team and individual performances in the program’s history. Her efforts have earned her several conference and regional coaching awards, and her athletes have won numerous titles in various competitions.

But Yohman’s primary role as the team’s keen coach to mentor the younger athletes is apparent.

“My coaches have helped instill in me that hard work pays off and I can do anything I set my mind to,” said Alyssa Adrian, the team’s only senior. “Through all the injuries, pain and obstacles I have encountered over the past four years, [the coaches] kept pushing me.”

Fighting through injuries

That the EAGL’s Rookie of the Year award has been handed out to a Pitt gymnast three times since 2009 should provide tangible evidence of Yohman’s tutelage. Last year, sophomore Haley Bodenheimer took home the honor. Unfortunately for the Panthers, an elbow injury kept Bodenheimer from participating in this season.

The 2012 EAGL Rookie of the Year is just one of many injured gymnasts on Pitt’s roster. But just like a gymnast’s knees on the best of dismounts, the Panthers are only slightly bent, proving they are nowhere near breaking.

In its second meet this season, the team recorded the sixth-highest score in school history with a total of 195.625.

“The talent level, the commitment level, the work ethic and the focus in the gym led us to that score,” Yohman said of the confident home performance that resulted in Pitt’s highest score since 2004.

The attitude of a winning team — especially one with the talent to perform at a level comparable to any other since the beginning of the school’s program in 1975 — is transmitted throughout each of its members. The aplomb to respond to injury by elevating personal goals and the poise to recognize that a run at the EAGL Championship is not just a dream are present in center-mat discussions and apparent in the constant uplifting of spirits during practices and meets.

“We’re only as strong as our weakest link, and everybody is stepping up,” Yohman said. “We lost two [key] kids at the beginning of the year, and we have everybody else stepping up in the gym to help.”

Maybe that is the reason why Harris and others slide mats underneath an airborne teammate practicing an uneven bar routine. Or why assistant coach Mike Rowe pushes — sometimes literally, should she be slipping — a gymnast for her best effort, and lets out an “Oh, yeah!” with a corresponding high-five when that upper limit is achieved. Or even why sophomore Bri Hogan chats with teammates sitting nearby on the cushiony blue mats fraught with chalk.

The Panthers talk about this season possibly being “the season” while Pink’s song “Try” provides an apropos anthem in the background.

The lyrics motivate the depleted, yet spirited, bunch, and a repetitive message resonates throughout the spacious facility: “You’ve gotta get up and try and try and try.”

In a sport rash with injuries, the Pitt gymnastics team never let the adversity alter its ultimate goals for this season.

“We have a realistic shot at reaching our goals,” Hogan says during the center-mat chat.

Freshman Lindsay Offut concurred.

“We better [meet our goals], or we’ll be busting heads,” Offut says in a soft-spoken, giggling voice with her bright blonde hair tied up by a slender pink bow.

Sophomore Haley Sedgewick further echoed the sentiment, saying that the team is “on the same page” and “feeling a more positive bond.”

The bond Sedgewick and others feel is one that led to a performance warranting GymInfo to give Pitt its first top-25 national ranking in school history. The Panthers placed at No. 22 after the 195.625 outing at home on Jan. 19.

The bond also allows for banter about Outback Steakhouse’s menu and what actually makes up marmalade. It is the togetherness that led Offut, who recently earned back-to-back EAGL Rookie of the Week awards, to laugh her way through her confident assertion. And it builds the tight-knit, communal, “stick-together” atmosphere lingering in the air with the loose chalk-dust particles.

Lifting for consistency

But unlike so many teams that taste success early and presumptively go about the next few weeks facing upset after upset, the Panthers know expectations increase with each high score.

“We started out well, so there is more pressure to be consistent,” Hogan says.

One way of building consistency is maintaining fitness levels, which will help fight off potential injuries. A duo assigned to improve the gymnasts’ strength, agility and physique, trainers Chris Gilman and Alicia Henry run Pitt’s weightlifting program.

On the second floor of the Fitzgerald Field House — in a compact room littered with barbells and benches, walls adorned with exercise balls and lifting belts — tensions rise from the adrenaline generated during weightlifting. Surely, if the girls aren’t taking it out on each other, the intensity boils over on the pair of trainers seeking to maximize effort in order to keep the athletes’ fitness up.

Sporting tightly laced gray Nike shoes, navy blue shorts and a gray Pitt shirt with the sleeves rolled up just below the elbows, Gilman displays rippling veins, short brown hair and a strong jaw line. He takes a break from pacing between determined-looking girls and clapping his hands to encourage their attitudes in order to debunk the idea that emotions boil over.

“We go on tempo, so it’s important that nobody does their own thing,” he says. “If they finish an activity, they go and do another together. One team, one unit operating on the same beat.”

The beat in this room — a more intense atmosphere than the practice gymnasium — consists of bass-heavy hip-hop and rap. Tunes by artists such as 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar and Drake (who sings a chorus about progressing with the whole team) bump while Henry, a Pitt senior, echoes Gilman.

“Even with lifting, they’re together. And if they aren’t, they’re like … ‘uh,’” she pauses to make a face frozen with bewilderment, “and get it together. They show up at the same time. When they finish [lifting], they go do ab workouts and leave together.”

One Team, One Dream, One Heartbeat

Even the injured gymnasts — all four of them — stick together.

“Our workouts are modified because of injuries, but we’re usually in here together,” said freshman Tiara Chadran, who has missed this season because of torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments, as well as torn medial and lateral hamstrings.

Even if injuries kept the younger gymnasts out of the lineups at meets, a torn ligament never prevented them from feeling like members of the Pitt gymnastics team.

Just before coming to Oakland this summer, freshman Jacqueline Lucci tweaked her elbow. She then sprained an ankle and, as a result, limps around the Fitzgerald Field House on crutches. Fellow sidelined freshman Maebelle Pacheco came to Lucci’s aid, though, to hold up her right arm and show off a blue bracelet. The yellow letters spell out the message “One Team, One Dream,” while the reverse side reads “One Heartbeat.”

“[My teammates] cheer me on during rehab. We give pep talks during tough events or if someone is struggling,” freshman Ellie Pikula, who has been sidelined since December because of a badly tracking patella, said about how the messages reflect Pitt gymnastics.

Adrian, who missed her freshman year because of injuries, is simply passing the torch by providing positive reinforcement.

“Since we had eight new freshmen, it was important to bond together as a team early in the weeks leading up to the start of preseason,” she said. “Team chemistry is one area we wanted to improve this year.”

Before the season began, the Panthers participated in Color Me Rad, an event that brought the whole team together.

Color Me Rad is a “5K of color bombardment,” its site says. Throughout the race, runners are drenched in powder of all colors. At the finish line, the Color Me Rad site explains, “Hugs are free and spectators are welcome.”

“Color Me Rad was the perfect activity to kick off the season,” Adrian said.

That camaraderie appeared to carry into the season, helping the Panthers overcome injury woes and adversity.

With two meets left — at home in the Fitzgerald Field House against Michigan State on Friday, March 8, at 7 p.m. and versus Auburn on Saturday, March 16, at 7 p.m. — the Pitt gymnastics team just needs to stick its landing to finish a fantastic season.