Maggie Nichols' OU Career was Amazing, but Also Bittersweet

When K.J. Kindler announced that the NCAA would not be staging its gymnastics championships this year because of the Coronavirus pandemic, the news was devastating to Maggie Nichols.

OU’s most decorated gymnast — arguably it’s most accomplished athlete every, in any sport — was overcome with emotion. The event was scheduled to unfold in her hometown of Minneapolis. The arena was sold out. The crowd would be filled with her hometown supporters. Even the host team, Minnesota, was coached by her long-time youth coach.

“I was very excited,” Nichols said Friday afternoon, “and I was just crushed that we weren’t able to go.”

Nichols participated in a media teleconference and eloquently described both her disappointment in the end of her senior season and the elation she has experienced during the last four years.

“It’s hard to even sum it all up,” she said. “I look back on my career and I kind of just smile because even though I did go through the lowest of the lows, I also went through the highest of the highs.”

Nichols was a two-time NCAA All-Around Gold Medalist and also landed a pocketful of golds in various disciplines: vault, floor, and uneven bars (twice). Best of all, she was part of two team national championships (2017 and 2019).

When Kindler broke the news, there were oceans of tears.

“It's just a sadness, I think, and a loss,” Kindler said last week. “You really are watching these athletes grieving right now. They’re grieving their season. They’re grieving their careers.”

The next day, Nichols said, the team gathered at her house in Norman.

“We kind of just had dinner together, just kind of hung out and talked, just relaxed,” Nichols said. “You know, just be by each other through this time that we all needed, and I think that was really good for our team. Everyone was very, very sad. Just because we weren’t at our best yet, but we were still (ranked) No. 1, and I think we had so much left to show everyone and we were still climbing up that mountain. We were almost at the top.

“So you know, everyone was very sad. Because everyone wanted the opportunity to go to Big 12, and then regionals and nationals, and hopefully we win a Big 12 ring and a national championship ring, and it’s just very — it’s very sad. And we did talk about that. But we just mainly talked about the positives and how great our season was, and how we ended on top and how we ended No. 1 and we just couldn’t have ended any better.”

Nichols said she would always be proud of her gymnastics legacy, which goes way beyond gold medals and championships.

She was “Athlete A” in the Larry Nassar sex assault scandal that rocked USA Gymnastics, the first athlete to come forward with a complaint against the now-imprisoned Nassar.

“Coming forward, I kind of went back and forth for awhile,” she said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to or not but I finally came to the conclusion that if I came forward, hopefully other people will come forward or they’ll feel empowered that they can too.

“My thing was coming forward was that if I can help one person then it’s worth it so coming forward was probably the best decision that I’ve made knowing that I helped so many other people with what they were going through. I had so many people reach out to me on social media and come up to me after meets saying that, ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’ Just hearing that makes coming forward worth it.”

And part of that is the forthcoming documentary film, “Athlete A,” which is scheduled to debut this spring at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. It wasn’t easy, Nichols said, but it was necessary.

“I’m very, very excited for it to come out,” she said. “It was a few years in the making, so it took a lot of different interviews, them coming to a lot of different competitions and following me around. It was very hard to film and everything. And at first, I wasn’t too sure I wanted to do it. A lot of the time I didn’t even want them to come or I didn’t want to do the interviews or do stuff. But now, after I’ve seen the film, it’s very powerful and very educational, and I think it’ll be very important when it comes out. I’m very excited for people to see it and the impact it’ll have.”

Nichols battled Nassar and stigma and injuries and the usual failures that come with elite-level athletic competition. Through it all, she persevered and established an unbreakable legacy.

“Looking back, it’s been like a dream,” Nichols said. “The things I’ve overcome and the things I’ve accomplished, I don’t think I could have had a better career.”

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