It was a perfect 13!

A 9.95 would have done the trick for the 3rd-ranked Florida Gators Friday night at the O-Dome, but the record crowd wanted much, much more and who better to give them what they wanted than Trinity Thomas?

Thomas is no stranger to coming through at crunch time for the Gators. Twice already this season she has come through with a 10 on floor when the Gators needed it the most. Alabama and Kentucky had the Gators right where they wanted them only to have Trinity shoot down their hopes of an upset by going perfect.

It wouldn’t have been an upset if 2nd-ranked Oklahoma had somehow pulled out a win. Like the Gators, the Sooners have won three of the last nine NCAA championships. They know how to come up with big scores when a meet is on the line against a highly ranked opponent and they were money on the balance beam. Four straight Sooners scored 9.90 or better to narrow the gap so this was a meet the Gators still couldn’t chalk up in the victory column.

Except for one thing. Nobody in the country is better on floor when the Gators need a big score than Trinity Thomas. The O-Dome crowd knew it, which is why they emitted a deafening roar when her name was announced. By the time she parachuted down from a stratospheric explosion off the floor on a double layout to end her first tumbling run, everyone in the building knew they were watching something very special. It seemed that almost before her feet hit the floor as she landed her double pike on the last tumbling run the crowd was on its feet shouting “Ten! Ten! Ten!” and lifting the O-Dome roof off its hinges.

Gator Bait photo by Chris Spears

It was a 10, the 13th of her collegiate career and her fifth this season that nailed down Florida’s 198.100-197.775 win over the Sooners and it couldn’t have happened on a better night than this one. It was Senior Night, time to say farewell to 9,685 of her closest friends shoehorned into the building. They came to see a win and they got one but it was made all that much better because of Thomas.

What all those friends in the stands didn’t know was that it was a last minute change in the lineup for Thomas to be on floor. Florida’s coaches were trying to rest her but the meet was close after the Gators had what for them is a sub-par beam performance of just 49.450. So after the Gators moved from beam for the final floor event, Florida assistant coach Adrian Burde asked Thomas if she needed to rest or could go.

“I was just kind of hmm, ‘do I need to rest today or can I do it’ and so I was warming up and Adrian was like ‘what do you know?’ and I was like okay, I’m good,” Thomas said.

Thomas was better than good but that’s not unusual. She has made a habit of turning in big scores and it doesn’t matter the event. Thomas is one of only a handful of gymnasts in collegiate history to complete the Gym Slam – a perfect 10 on all four events. If she can score a 10 on the bars this year, she can complete an in-season Gym Slam since she already has three on floor, one on vault and one on the balance beam.

In her collegiate career Thomas now has hit for a 10 six times on floor, three each on beam and bars and one on vault. With that kind of record, there is little question why the crowd moves to the edge of its seat whenever they see Thomas ready to compete. No matter the event, the O-Dome crowd expects a 10, to the point that they don’t know whether to celebrate a high score or boo the judge whenever the score isn’t perfect.

Thomas won or shared the title in all four events Friday night to win the all-around with a 39.850, the highest score in the nation so far. The way she scored it was almost like each event was building up to the 10 on floor. She started out with a 9.925 on vault, then scored 9.950 on bars, 9.975 on beam before her climactic finish. One judge gave her a 9.90 and the other gave her 9.95 on vault. On bars, both judges gave her a 9.95.

On the balance beam one judge gave her a 10, but the other didn’t see it that way, scored it a 9.95 and that only irritated the crowd. Their mood changed quickly when Thomas signaled to the judges she was ready on floor.

The routine was so crisp, so clean and so explosive that neither of the two judges dared find a flaw. Thomas got her 10, the crowd was satisfied and the Gators got their win.

“It definitely felt special especially on Senior Night,” Thomas said. “Every floor routine I get so excited for. That’s my favorite event to compete, so when I finished I was like, ‘Oh yes!’”

Thanks to Thomas, Florida was assured of victory, but when freshman Sloane Blakely finished off the night with a 9.90 on floor it almost seemed like the Gators were rubbing it in on Oklahoma. Blakely’s 9.90 was Florida’s fifth consecutive 9.90 or better score. Megan Skaggs and Alyssa Baumann turned in 9.90s and Nya Reed followed with a 9.95 that the crowd felt should have been a perfect 10.

That more than offset what Oklahoma did on the balance beam where they outscored the Gators 49.550-49.450, the lone event the Sooners won all night.

During Florida’s beam rotation, Skaggs made a mid-routine adjustment that was lost on everyone except maybe the Florida staff, gymnasts and judges. To compensate for a slight bobble at the beginning of her routine, Skaggs added a .10-value front aerial that raised her score. The bobble might have lowered her score to something around a 9.80, which could have been costly in a meet that was so competitive, so she made the decision the fly to adjust.

“That was a veteran move,” Florida coach Jenny Rowland said.

Skaggs said making that kind of adjustment is something she had never had to do in the past but in a split second she went through the Rolodex of moves she keeps in her head and came up with the front aerial. The added degree of difficulty was noted by one judge who gave her a 9.90. The other judge saw it differently, scoring it a 9.85, but the average of 9.875 was a real boost.

“I didn’t expect to almost slip on the beam but it happens and you have to keep going and get yourself back on track, continue to believe on yourself and finish strong,” Skaggs said. “… I had to decide so when I didn’t connect my first leaps, like the splits, I had to add an additional – is it a 10th? – so out of my aerials I had to add an additional leap which I haven’t done in like three years probably, which I hope never happens again.”

The 10 by Thomas and the adjustment on the fly by Skaggs are the kind of pressure responses that have turned this Florida team special. The Gators have already clinched a share of the Southeastern Conference championship, their fourth straight. With a win next week at Auburn, the Gators can claim the outright SEC title.

No doubt beating that exceptionally good Auburn team on the road next week will require another clutch performance by the Gators, but that’s something they expect of themselves.

“We talk a lot about how pressure is a privilege,” Skaggs said. “Although it would be fun to dominate a whole meet, that’s not how we get better. Even if the meet is very far and there is a huge gap in the score, we want to put up our best routines and do what we’ve been training. It’s exciting to have a close meet on the last event and know that you need to show up because that makes us better when we’re putting all our training on the competition floor.”

When you get a perfect 13 and your super senior (5th year, came back because NCAA counted 2020 as a COVID year and gave everyone an extra year of eligibility) can make the kind of instant decisions that can make a huge difference in winning or losing the biggest meet in the country, you have a team that is capable of winning the national championship. The Gators have two more meets before they have to adjust their mindset to the rigors of SEC, regional and NCAA championship meets, but already they are toughening themselves for the pressure ahead by coming through with clutch performances when meets are on the line.

This season, the Gators have won the Alabama meet by .075 when Thomas and Nya Reed went back-to-back with 10s. Against LSU, Reed hit a 10 and Thomas and Leah Wong scored 9.975s as the Gators scored 49.800 on floor, the highest score in the nation so far this year, to turn a white knuckles meet into a relatively comfortable 198.150-197.825 win. Thomas salvaged what had been a poor floor showing a week ago at Kentucky for a perfect 10 then followed that up with a 9.975 on beam with Skaggs hitting 9.950 as the Gators won that one, 197.575-197.350.

When a meet is on the line, this team knows how to finish and win. There aren’t a lot of teams in the country with that capability.

“This team is clutch and I think they’ve shown it throughout this entire season," Roland said. "Just the consistency, the confidence and using each week as an opportunity … an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to get better. I know from this meet they’re criticizing a lot of things but a lot of them have so much to be proud of and it’s just something that they’re really good at doing – trying to be perfect but at the same time being normal. They’ll be ready to get back in the gym next week, keep grinding and trying to get better. That’s all I can ask of this team.”