Freshman Giana O’Connor approached the beam, the first event in her collegiate career as an Illinois gymnast. She felt the nerves begin to build in her stomach. She took a deep breath in, a deep breath out and pictured herself going through the beam routine.

And then she just “did it.”

O’Connor was able to overcome her nerves with a deep breath, but for the rest of the team, it wasn’t that easy. Illinois finished its first meet of the season with 193.750 points, behind No. 6 Stanford (196.025) and host No. 19 Arizona (195.850) and in front of San Jose State (192.550). The Illini recorded solid performances in each event, but some uncharacteristic falls led to the third-place finish.

“It’s always nice to get the first meet under your belt,” head coach Kim Landrus said. “With this performance, there is definitely a lot of room to grow, so I am extremely confident that this team will use today as fuel to the fire for the rest of the season.”

Illinois began the meet strong on the balance beam with four gymnasts finishing in the top 10. O’Connor, who finished fourth after sticking a 9.825, led the Illini. Senior Alina Weinstein placed seventh in the event with a 9.750, and sophomores Kelsi Eberly and Sunny Kato cracked the top 10 with 9.725s.

“For it being my first meet, I think I did really well both on beam and overall.” O’Connor said. “Like everything else in the meet, there’s still a lot of room for improvement, but for now, I feel that I did pretty good.”

The Illini moved to floor for their second rotation in which they scored an event-high 48.600 as a squad. Weinstein finished fifth in the event, first for Illinois, with a 9.825.

Illinois next moved to vault, where junior Amber See, Weinstein and O’Connor scored 9.700s or higher to help the team to 48.400. Weinstein was out in front again with an individual 9.775, a score that put her first on the team and third overall. O’Connor and See finished with vaults of 9.750 and 9.700, respectively.

“There were a lot of both good and bad things that came out of today.” Weinstein said. “I feel we did all right overall. We had some really solid routines, but we also had some really uncharacteristic falls that cost us a little bit. Personally, I think I did all right, it was a good first meet for me. There are definitely a lot of improvements I can make, but at the end of it, it was a good learning experience for both the team and myself so we’re just going to carry over the lessons we learned today into the rest of the season.”

Illinois concluded its first meet on the uneven bars, where the Illini scored 48.500. Junior Sarah Fiedler led the team on the bars with a career-high 9.850, which was good for a fourth-place finish in the event.

“We definitely had a lot of nerves given that it was the first meet of the season,” Fiedler said. “But I feel like we had some really good routines and that we’re headed in the right direction. That being said, we made some mistakes, which is OK as long as we learn from our mistakes and don’t repeat them again next weekend.”

Nicholas can be reached at [email protected] and @IlliniSportsGuy.