Friday night’s meet versus No. 8 Oklahoma started great for the 10th-ranked ISU gymnastics team. With his team seemingly undistracted by the sight of former ISU coaches K.J. Kindler and Lou Ball wearing Oklahoma colors, coach Jay Ronayne was thrilled to have a 98.075 – 98.025 lead after two events.

“We were rolling . it was a great feeling. Vault went exactly as we thought it was going to go and we took that performance into bars . everything was going according to plan,” he said.

Everything was going according to plan, that is, until Iowa State (7-3) started its beam rotation. The Cyclones first beam performer was Megan Barnes, a freshman who earned Iowa State’s highest vault score, a 9.850, earlier in the night. Uncharacteristically, however, she fell off beam, leading to a score of 9.200.

In a typical gymnastics meet, one fall doesn’t do much damage because only the top five of six scores contribute to the total, meaning the fall doesn’t have to be counted. However, Iowa State’s beam troubles weren’t over yet.

After strong routines by freshman Katie Sweetin (9.800) and sophomore Jasmine Thompson (9.750), the Cyclones were dealt another blow when freshman Melanie Tham lost her balance and stepped off the beam, leading to a score of 9.150.

Iowa State finished beam, an event they were ranked No. 4 in the country going into Friday night with a 48.910 average, with a score of 48.350.

After the third rotation, Oklahoma (9-1) had jumped out to a 147.000 – 146.425 lead on the heels of Iowa State’s falls and posting their own 48.975 on floor exercise.

Iowa State fell into a deeper spiral on floor exercise. After a strong start by Barnes, freshmen Nikki Dilbert (9.250), Melanie Tham (9.175) and Katie Sweetin (9.250) each fell on their final passes, causing the Cyclones to have to count two falls on floor.

Despite Thompson’s 9.825 and senior Janet Anson’s season-high 9.925, the damage had already been done. Iowa State exited floor, an event where it averaged 48.860, with a 48.000, its lowest total on floor in years. Oklahoma finished beam with a 49.250, their highest event score of the night.

Clearly disappointed, Ronayne was at a loss at how to describe what happened in the 196.250 – 194.425 loss.

“On floor, I don’t know particularly what it was that happened,” he said. “The mistakes that we had weren’t anything out of the ordinary, things that we had been making mistakes on in practice, not a lot, but a little bit.”

Despite freshmen being on the receiving end of all the falls, Ronayne pointed out he isn’t chalking it up to freshmen mistakes.

“You could say they were freshmen mistakes, but they were just mistakes,” he said. “Nobody anticipated anything like this to happen. I won’t say I will guarantee that this will not happen again, but the chances of this happening again is very unlikely.

“I would say that they probably just have not done enough routines like that in practice under some sort of pressure and that’s one of the things were going to address in the upcoming weeks.”

Barnes said even though inexperience may have been a factor, that doesn’t fully explain the mistakes that happened.

“It definitely was flukey for us to do that because that’s not how we train, but the more we compete, the more experience we’re going to get,” she said.

Senior Jade Kvach had her theory as to what occurred, but believes the team learned a lot from Friday’s performance.

“I think once things started to go a little bit, everybody just kind of let it slip and kept letting things slip,” Kvach said. “[We were] just not being 100 percent aggressive on everything we were doing and I think that may have hurt us.”