Where Luisa Blanco Turned for Advice During Alabama Gymnastics' Midseason Slump
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Each and every weekend from January to March, "Friday Night Heights" is appointment television for Shea Mahoney. Four years since she last donned a sparkly crimson leotard, Mahoney tunes in on Fridays to watch the Crimson Tide.
"Even though I’m not the one competing, I always put my ‘A’ ring on," Mahoney said. "And I always turn Alabama gymnastics on, and watching them is so fun and always gives me all the feels. I would do anything to go and do it one more time."
A former all-SEC gymnast, Mahoney was a competed for Alabama from 2017-2020. Her final season was the freshamn season for the Crimson Tide's current fifth-year senior class of Luisa Blanco, Ella Burgess, Makarri Doggette and Mati Waligora.
The 2024 Alabama squad got off to a hot start, winning the first meet of the season with a 197.125 score at a neutral site quad meet. The team then reeled off three more scores above 197 in the month of January, capped by its highest score of 197.575 to become the first team to win on the road at Florida since 2019.
But the month of February hasn't been as kind to the Crimson Tide. It started with the worst score of the season in a disappointing home loss to Kentucky followed up by a shaky performance and road loss at Auburn the next week.
On the bus ride back from Auburn, the team immediately got together and figured out things they needed to and wanted to fix. They weren't going to "sit in the suck" according to Blanco. As a fifth-year gymnast, Blanco has experienced the ups and downs a collegiate gymnastics season can bring. She also knew there was someone she wanted to reach out to for a little more perspective and wisdom.
"I was talking to Shea Mahoney— she was my senior when I was a freshman," Blanco said. "I just look up to her in so many ways, and she’s just so good at articulating feelings into thoughts and then letting you have these aha-moments. I just looked up to her, and I was like, ‘Hey, you’ve been in my shoes. What can we do?’"
While Mahoney says there was no playbook for life after gymnastics, it was important for her to maintain her relationships with those she was teammates with. It looks different from person to person, but she has stay, but Blanco is one she has built a close relationship with both inside and outside of the gym over the last five years.
She regularly provides encouragement and support to Blanco and was gladly willing to share advice when asked.
"The truth is, every Alabama gymnast has been through this in some way shape or form," Mahoney told BamaCentral. "It just depends on what season, what part of the season, everything like that. Basically what I told her is, ‘Hey, coexistence is a beautiful thing. Finding your balance and defining what that balance is for the rest of the season is the best thing you can do right now.’”
Mahoney loves the direction second-year head coach Ashley Johnston is taking the program and her mentality of having the gymnasts “play” gymnastics to keep things light and fun. And she also realizes there are times the gymnasts have to switch to the gamer mentality and compete with an edge. The key is finding the happy medium.
"And defining that balance because it doesn't have to be all one or the other," Mahoney said. "It can be a really beautiful balance, and these girls just need to define what that balance is for them, which they have already done. It's just getting the kinks out.
“And I also told her, ‘Hey, this happens. You’re in the SEC.’ There’s going to be weeks where you get beat, and it’s always going to suck when you get beat. But it's how you come back from that and handle it that matters. So I just told her it's a marathon, not a sprint. You got to find the balance that works for you guys, and that may look different week to week based off of what everybody needs."
Blanco took the advice to heart and shared a similar message when speaking to the media last Tuesday during the Crimson Tide's bye week. Alabama did not compete this past Friday night, but will have two meets this week starting on Monday afternoon in a quad meet at Texas Women's University before coming back home to Coleman Coliseum for the Power of Pink meet against Georgia on Friday. Blanco said having a little bit of a bye before two exciting meets was exactly what the team needed.
For Johnston, the adversity of the past two weeks has been good postseason preparation for her squad. The Crimson Tide was competing free and fun the first few weeks of the season, but as expectations rose after a strong start, the team struggled. Johnston said the team isn't shying away from the expectations.
"While these last two weeks haven’t gone exactly the way we wanted them to go, we’ve grown a lot," Johnston said. "And we’ve had a lot of conversations and talked about why it went that way, and what are the things we need to make sure we don’t let happen again if we want to overcome that moving forward. So this team is very aware. They’re hungry for greatness."
The final stretch of the regular season begins with the two meets this week. Then Alabama travels to LSU before returning home for Senior Night and the alumni quad meet on March 8. The regular season finale is at No. 1 Oklahoma on March 17 with postseason beginning at SEC Championships the following week.
These final five regular season meets will be crucial in determining Alabama's standing and seeding for both the SEC championship meet and NCAAs. The seeding for the NCAA Tournament is determined by a team's National Qualifying Score (NQS)– the top-six scores, three of which must be on the road, with the highest score dropped and the remaining five averaged.
The Crimson Tide put up a strong road score at Florida in Week 4 but will want to put up other big scores over the next few weeks starting on Monday afternoon in Texas.
Mahoney will be back in Coleman Coliseum for Alumni Night to cheer on this year's team in person. She could easily hold some bitterness in her heart that her freshman class is getting to experience a fifth year after her own senior season and collegiate career were cut short by COVID in 2020. While Alabama got most of the season in, it came to an abrupt end when the world shut down in what was supposed to be the final week of the regular season in March 2020.
Instead, like she did as a gymnast at Alabama, Mahoney holds pure joy and excitement for Blanco and the other fifth-year seniors that not only experienced the COVID cancellation in their first year but also a coaching change heading into their senior year.
"The group of girls that are specifically seniors right now are truly so deserving of everything that they are experiencing," Mahoney shared. "I could not be prouder of them, truly. The program has gone through some significant changes in the past few years, and watching these girls lead this team and rise to the occasion and be one of the best Bama teams we’ve seen in a long time, like, how special is that? These girls have taken a crazy amount of circumstances in their five years and made the absolute most of it."
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