Nichols keeps chasing perfection
After just eight weeks of her collegiate career, Oklahoma freshman Maggie Nichols enters the final home meet of the regular season against Georgia chasing her fifth 10.0. Nichols and the No. 1-ranked Sooners face the No. 7 Bulldogs at 6:45 p.m. Friday at Lloyd Noble Center.
NORMAN — It took Haley Scaman three seasons to set the Oklahoma women’s gymnastics program record with five perfect 10.0 scores.
But after just eight weeks of her collegiate career, freshman Maggie Nichols enters the final home meet of the regular season against No. 7-ranked Georgia chasing her fifth 10.0.
Seven months after barely missing the U.S. Olympic team, the 5-foot-4 dynamo is dominating collegiate gymnastics in a way that hasn’t been done by anyone in more than a decade.
“When she first came here, her goal was to get a 10 — just one,” coach K.J. Kindler said. “She’s blown it out already in the first eight weeks. She’s retooling, like what can I really do? What new goals could I set? What could I reach? Because she’s just reassessed where she’s at.
“It’s super rare. I would say she’s one of the best ever already. That’s something pretty special to say.”
So far, Nichols posted perfect scores on vault, floor and twice on beam. She’s just inches away from nailing a 10 on the bars to complete the sweep.
A week ago, the Little Canada, Minn., native set a program record with an all-around score of 39.925 — the highest allaround score by a freshman since at least 1998, according to RoadtoNationals.com.
Her mark was the highest in collegiate gymnastics since 2001, when UCLA’s Mohini Bhardwaj posted a 39.975 in the NCAA Championships.
By putting up such strong numbers as a freshman, Nichols is creating the kind of foundation that the undefeated No. 1 Sooners can use to transform their strong program into a dynasty — the same way that Courtney Kupets helped Georgia become a powerhouse in the early 2000s.
“Courtney was an integral part of them winning four national championships in a row every year she was there and then a fifth when she wasn’t there,” Kindler said. “Maggie is really honestly anchoring a team that could do that sort of thing. That’s a pretty special thing. It doesn’t happen very often any more.”
Gymnastically speaking, the transition to college was a smooth one. Her training hours were cut from 32 to 20 to abide by NCAA guidelines, and she learned to shape her routines in a way that would earn high marks from the college judges.
In the elite level, gymnasts are scored according to difficulty and execution, but in college, everyone is judged based on execution. So rather than going for the most difficult move on an element, Nichols sharpens her best skills.
The ease of the transition was obvious when Nichols set her first program record with a 39.875 all-around score and put up her first perfect 10 on the vault in the third meet of the season.
“Seeing those scores go up, it finally felt like my hard work was paying off,” Nichols said. “Finally something good is coming from it.”
But while she’s flourishing in the gym now, it took some time to decompress from the stress and disappointment of the Olympic Trials before she could bounce back for a stellar season.
Nichols looked to be a lock for the team after finishing second in the all-around at the 2015 P&G Championships and 2016 AT&T American Cup.
Then a meniscus tear on an Amanar vault in April 2016 kept her out of training during the most critical months and forced her to miss two major meets in the build up to the July Olympic Trials.
Even with her training disrupted, Nichols fought her way to a sixthplace all-around finish at the trials.
And yet, it still wasn’t good enough, and the once sure-thing for the team wasn’t even offered an alternate spot on the squad bound for Rio.
It was a devastating blow for the teenager, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it.
She wouldn’t be going to Brazil, but she still had plenty of packing to do with her freshman year at Oklahoma rapidly approaching. Almost five weeks after being left off the team, Nichols was moving into her dorm room in Norman.
“When I first came here, I wasn’t in the best place mentally because not making that team, I was pretty upset,” Nichols said. “Then the Olympics are going on and that was pretty hard to watch because I wanted to be on that team.”
With the disappointment of missing the Olympics and homesickness that comes with moving to a new town 800 miles away from her parents, Nichols had to work through a funk in her first couple months on campus. But by November, she had bounced back and was using her near misses on the elite level as fuel for the next step in her career.
“She didn’t exactly have the storybook ending that she was looking for, and there’s so many different ways people can handle that,” Kindler said. “The way she handled that was forge ahead. She just kind of said, ‘OK, I’m going to show everybody that I’m great.’
“A lot of people would give up, would be tainted by it. But she totally has turned a switch and said, ‘OK, now I’m doing this and I’m going to put everything into this.’ And she has.”