Gymnastics: Talucci leading Panthers in just sophomore season

Dazzling, ferocious, powerful — in addition to confident, she’s feeling all of these about… Dazzling, ferocious, powerful — in addition to confident, she’s feeling all of these about her routines tonight.

She walks up to the mat, looking down the barrel of the long stretch of padding in front of her, waits, holds her arms high in the air, then focuses on her target. It’s a springboard sitting at the end of the 82-foot-long mat serving as the runway she’ll use to propel herself on the vault.

Sophomore Alicia Talucci takes off on a dead sprint, arms slowly gaining momentum, nearing the board with each stride, one last glimpse before she leaps, launches, tucks, flips, stretches and sticks the landing.

The result, a score of 9.850, is the best of the night.

She acknowledges the crowd, yet a mere smirk creeps onto Talucci’s face as she departs from her landing spot, a tribute to her calm and focused demeanor.

She’s humble off the mat, describing herself as a “really awful” snowboarder. She’s even humble on the mat, pulling off some dance moves while waiting for scores after last Friday’s meet. However, her status as only a sophomore could earn her bragging rights later in her career.

According to coach Debbie Yohman, Talucci put together one of the best freshman seasons in Pitt’s history. In the all-around event, Talucci earned All-East Atlantic Gymnastics League first team honors and qualified for the NCAA Regional Championships. She finished third in all-around at the EAGL Championships with a 39.100 score.

All-around comprises four events — the vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise — with a possible 10 points each. The sum of all the scores gives the gymnast an all-around score, meaning Talucci was nearly perfect in order to to score a 39.100.

Yet the little mistakes are what drive her crazy.

“The [coaches] are pretty much happy with what I do on the competition floor,” Talucci said. “It’s more myself that gets frustrated because I know what my potential is, and when I don’t do it it’s really frustrating. I really hate losing, and I’m really hard on myself when I don’t do well.”

“She’s different to coach,” Yohman said. “If she’s struggling, once you know her you learn to leave her alone because she’ll go and get her work done. We’ve learned not to yell at her so much as when she was a freshman now that we know. We leave her be, and she gets it done.”

It’s easy, even for a gymnastics novice, to notice her natural athleticism and talents. However, what will push her to be great will be her work ethic, Yohman said.

Just how far is still debatable. She is a sophomore with lightyears of potential improvement ahead of her.

“If she stays healthy she’ll just get better and better,” Yohman said. “She could be an all-around EAGL champion. She could be an EAGL champion on beam. She could possibly qualify for nationals, but that’s also very hard and tricky.”

The predictions could be endless, yet on the mat they mean nothing. The fact is, the meet goes on, and Talucci steps up for her second event of the night ­— bars.

It doesn’t take Talucci long to name her least favorite event. “Bars,” she says, without hesitation.

It’s still fairly surprising to see a mistake by the Coatesville, Pa. native. A slight slipup costs her, and the result is a 9.425 score. Struggling on the bars is a theme of the night against Ohio State.

“I think we got a bit distracted during bars, and that carried over to beam for us,” Yohman said after the meet.

There’s not an ounce of smile now. The mistake still bugs her after the match.

“I had a little slipup on the bars, but I kept going through and didn’t fall,” Talucci said.

Talucci can pick apart her performances to the last degrading detail, but in the end, she knows at least one person supports her. After all, it was Yohman’s unwavering encouragement as far back as her sophomore year of high school that brought her to Pitt.

Talucci wasn’t hard to miss in high school. She competed as a member of Metzler’s Gymnastics in Downingtown, Pa. for 12 years, qualifying in the Junior Olympic nationals from 2005-07. She finished fourth in the all-around competition in the 2005 Junior Olympics.

Despite this good fortune, 2006, her high school sophomore year, almost marked devastation for Talucci. She knew she was going to compete at Division I somewhere for gymnastics and had options to choose from.

A stress fracture in her right foot scared away some teams and scholarship offers, Talucci said. Out of her former options, which included Denver, Iowa State and North Carolina, Pitt, more specifically coach Yohman, remained the most committed to her despite her injury.

“You go to nationals with all the college recruiters there, and Pitt always supported me since even my freshman year of high school,” Talucci said. “They were pretty much the only school that kept in contact with me. They were really upfront with me and made sure how I was doing [after the injury]. Other schools tried to pressure me to pick them first, it was really cutthroat.”

She rewards the Panthers day-in and day-out with stellar performances in meets.

The temporary Panther tattoo still shimmers on her cheek after the meet as she greets another smiling fan. Despite Pitt’s (0-3, 0-1 EAGL) narrow 194.200-192.250 loss to Ohio State last Friday night, Talucci was positive about the team and her effort.

“I did pretty well. We just made a few little mistakes — that’s all,” Talucci said.

Yohman, who set a preseason goal of winning the EAGL conference for her team, thought distractions brought the Panthers down that night.

“We didn’t play like EAGL champions tonight, I think we got … distracted during bars, and that carried over to beam for us,” Yohman said after the meet. “We brought it back on the floor though and finished off strong. We had a great night on vault, and we improved two points from last week.”

Talucci did win her second all-around title on the year, edging out Ohio State’s best by 0.075.

In fact, Talucci took or tied for first in all of her events, except bars. That’s a lot to be happy about, but there’s still that one mistake on the bars that she’ll think about.

“Alicia got hurt a little on bars, but everything else tonight was exceptional,” Yohman said. “She is probably angry with her bars performance, she made a mistake and didn’t take it with her on beam, but that is something that is great about her. If she makes mistakes, she fixes them.”

Yohman used the word “ferocious” to describe Talucci.

The term stuck because of Talucci’s attitude and a testament from Yohman about her work ethic.

“The reward that you get from doing a difficult sport, when you hit your routine — I wouldn’t give that up for anything,” Talucci said, “A lot of people don’t think it’s that hard and say, ‘Oh you just dance around in a leotard.’”

But Talucci describes gymnastics as “intense,” which can also show in her aspirations.

“My goals are so much more higher than the scoreboard,” Talucci said.