With little over a month to go before its first meet, the gymnastics team performed for a large audience Tuesday, Nov. 27 in its pre-season Preview Meet at the Auburn Arena.
The team took the floor for the first time before an audience after five days without practice over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Despite head coach Jeff Graba's explanations of the team's rust before the performance, not too many audience members seemed to care how long the team had been without practice as the team performed to raucous applause.
The audience has played a major role over the past few seasons, and as Graba mentioned at the end of the event, gymnastics has the second highest student attendance, with the first being football.
The event was officially judged alongside a panel of ex-players.
The coaches explained that an aim of the event was safely pushing boundaries and determining which routines stay while getting practice in a professional arena and being introduced to fans.
The gymnasts were even instructed to "over-rotate" and deliberately fall in order to land safely, because as Graba said to the audience, landing face-first would hurt worse than the alternative.
After the event and a slew of autograph signings to fans' posters and balloons, sophomore all-around performer Megan Walker said the practice was necessary due to the looming season and the big stage provided by the arena.
"The meet is set up just so that we can start getting acclimated to the arena and just get used to throwing things in front of people," Walker said. "It is a month early so there is a lot of rough water, but it's really good for the team to get going."
Walker said the meet was especially beneficial for the new additions to the team.
"We've got to work out the kinks with these newcomers," Walker said. "It's one thing to be really talented in the practice facility. It's another thing to get in the competition arena and show what you're capable of.
"I think it's going to be a little bit of that, a little bit of growing pains in that respect. But we're doing our best with events like this to try to work those kinks out."
In a previous interview, coach Graba had said the 2013 class of gymnasts was one of the most powerful and dynamic classes that had been signed at Auburn.
After the meet Tuesday, he stuck to his word.
"Well, we have a lot of potential this year," Graba said. "We lost a lot of seniors last year. But I do think we're a lot more talented this year... So I'm really excited about this group this year."
Graba said Auburn attempted to sign a class that was more well-versed in a variety of events.
"The seniors that we lost weren't allaround athletes," Graba said. "Many of them were just doing an event or two, so we brought in more routines. That's a good thing for us because it gives us more depth."
According to the roster, the team will have six freshmen this season. Walker said that she and her fellow newcomers are learning quickly, however.
"It takes time to get all these girls together on the same page, but the freshmen acclimated fast. It's just a fun team," Walker said.
The season will begin against California and Arizona Jan. 6, at Berkeley, Calif.
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