The Florida Gators are stacked with talent -- and aiming for the title

ALMOST EXACTLY ONE year ago, the Florida Gators gymnastics team was on a plane departing Fort Worth, Texas, and heading back to Gainesville.

They were leaving two days earlier than planned after being stunned in the semifinals. There had been high expectations for the No. 3-ranked squad, but the Gators had been upset by Missouri by one-tenth of a point and had not advanced to the final round.

For the next few days, the gymnasts experienced a range of almost grief-like emotions: sadness, anger, despair. But they didn't dwell for long. About a week after getting back to campus, all of the members of the team who would be returning came together for a meeting. There were no coaches in attendance or even a formal agenda, just a resolution to not let the same thing happen the next year.

"We were just so hurt by how [the season] ended, we realized we needed to figure out what we were going to be as a team, before these freshmen came in, and we all needed to be on the same page," senior Selena Harris-Miranda told ESPN. "We needed to know what we're working towards and how we're going to do this. And that's when we came up with 'The Promise.'"

They were inspired by the 2008 speech by then-Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, which is immortalized on a plaque at the football stadium and something that is "just seen everywhere on campus and part of the culture," according to Harris-Miranda. Junior Skylar Draser first came up with the idea of the team adopting Tebow's message and making it their own. Draser showed everyone a video of Tebow's impassioned plea, highlighting his final words specifically:

"You have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of this season, and you'll never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of this season. You'll never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season."

The team embraced Draser's idea immediately and meticulously crafted their own version of "The Promise" at a team retreat in September. Focusing on accountability and being there for one another, it has been the Gators' mantra all season long and is displayed prominently at the entrance of the team's training facility.

"Our team will hold ourselves and each other responsible to embrace the hard, show up 100% and unite together. We have a team mentality and resiliently step up to any challenge. We are unbreakable and we won't back down. A win for one is a win for all."

The words, and perhaps the bond and unity behind them, have helped lead the Gators back to Fort Worth again this year. After a strong season, which saw the team win its first SEC championship since 2023, No. 3-seeded Florida will need to continue to "embrace the hard" in Thursday's semifinal (4:30 p.m. ET on ESPN) as it takes on No. 2 LSU, No. 6 Georgia and No. 7 Stanford with the top two teams advancing to Saturday's national championship.

And this year, everything feels different. With six former national team members -- including three world champions -- and a slew of gymnasts capable of contending for individual titles, Florida's depth of talent is unmatched. The sting of last year's exit has subsided, but it created a connection that remains, and with that comes a confidence and a belief that could carry the Gators to their first national championship title since 2015.

"We're so much more bonded now," Harris-Miranda said. "These are my teammates, my girls for life probably, because we were in here sweating, bleeding, crying, doing all the things. We've gone through all the hard conversations. It was like building a family. It's literally a sisterhood -- annoying sisters sometimes -- but they're also my best friends.

"It would mean the world to forever have that trophy and the ring and cement our legacy and those forever bonds."

RILEY MCCUSKER WASN'T SURE at the end of last season if she would be returning. She was a senior and had already been through all of the "last" hallmarks and even had her Senior Night. But due to an injury that sidelined her for the 2024 season, she had one final year of eligibility if she wanted it.

With lofty post-gymnastics goals, including medical school, she was still on the fence about her decision when the team-only meeting took place following the semifinal exit. She recused herself from participating but offered her full support and guidance if needed. But she noticed there was something different about the energy in the gym over the summer when the team returned. Everyone seemed so excited and the freshmen were "so eager to begin their college journeys and learn" from the upperclassmen. It reminded McCusker of how much she still loved the sport. She decided to stay.

Now, approaching the last week of her gymnastics career -- after balancing an internship this semester with Dr. Ellen Casey, a team physician for USA Gymnastics, and applying to medical schools -- McCusker couldn't be happier with her choice.

"I think I knew from the beginning how special this group is. I've been saying, 'This is the best team I've ever been on in my five years as a Gator' from preseason,'" McCusker told ESPN. "I think this team is my favorite team that I've been on so far. I feel like we did a complete turn from last season and just the way we're approaching this season. We're really having so much fun with it and we're competing freely."

With a beach retreat that involved a slew of icebreakers and activities, including one game that involved team members wearing blindfolds and having to identify their teammates based solely on animal sounds, as well as various team parties, trips to the movies and events throughout the fall semester, the team grew close in a way that felt organic. McCusker said everyone bought in quickly to the idea of "A win for one is a win for all" and it helped further create unity.

When the group told head coach Jenny Rowland and the rest of the staff about their idea for "The Promise," they were quickly met with support.

"We said, 'Jenny, this is what we want to commit to this year as a team,' and we talked about all of it with her," Harris-Miranda said. "We said, 'This is what we want as a team and we want it on the wall as soon as you walk into the gym.' The coaches are always like, 'We're on the boat with you but you guys are driving it,' and they were all so receptive to it."

The season hasn't been without challenges. On Feb. 6, the Gators, then ranked No. 2, were handed a surprising loss on the road against No. 7 Missouri. Struggling on their opening rotation on bars, usually their best event, the team never fully recovered and recorded a season-low 196.50. The following week, Florida lost again to top-ranked Oklahoma in front of a sold-out crowd at home. It was the team's first loss at the Stephen C. O'Connell Center in over two years and marked the first time the Gators had lost back-to-back SEC meets since 2006.

But the defeats marked a clear turning point. After the loss to the Sooners, the Gators regrouped. They had tough conversations about what had gone wrong and what could have been done differently. They watched film and offered words of support to one another. No one blamed anyone else and they resolved to get back on track but also to not put too much emphasis on winning. The experience allowed them, yet again, to be vulnerable with one another.

For Kayla DiCello, a junior who was sidelined last season due to an Achilles rupture, further building such a connection only made her more confident in the meets going forward.

"Trust is 100% one of the most important things to have on a team because doing gymnastics alone is very hard," DiCello said to ESPN. "And when you're up on the beam, if you don't feel the trust from the girls standing there supporting you, it kind of makes you feel a little bit unsure. So the fact that we have such a good bond now and such deep trust with each other, it makes it so much easier to go up there and know that I have the rest of the team supporting me. They have my back and I have their back."

The Gators haven't lost since.

At the SEC championships in March, Florida battled for the first three rotations with Oklahoma and LSU for the lead. The Sooners held the ever-so-slight edge going into the final event, but the Gators remained focused. They huddled together before starting on bars, an event in which they are ranked No. 1 in the country.

"I remember as we were standing there together, Selena was saying, 'Every little thing counts, it's not over till it's over," McCusker said. "She said, 'We know how to do this. Let's just go up there and hit it.' And I think that's what we all did."

Harris-Miranda's words to her teammates could not have been more true. Senior eMjae Frazier, a transfer from California, opened the rotation with a 9.90. Junior Anya Pilgrim followed with a 9.925. Sophomore Skye Blakely and DiCello were both nearly flawless with 9.975s. Harris-Miranda then earned a perfect 10.0, her first of the season on bars. It all came down to McCusker, on her only event of the day. She had no idea just how close the score was, but she said she had been "feeding off of everyone else's confidence" in the routines before her and felt ready to go. She earned a 9.925 to secure the win by 0.025 of a point over Oklahoma.

The team was all together as the final scores flashed on the screen.

"We were all clustered there, just staring at the scoreboard and waiting to see, and then the moment it happened, I just felt an unbelievable amount of joy just come over me," DiCello said. "I started crying, I was so excited. I was just really proud of our entire team and all of the work that we put in to get ourselves up to this point because I mean, our season has been anything but a straight line. So figuring out what we need from meet to meet and just fixing it from there to get us to this point, and then to see it all play out, has just been truly amazing."

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After they received the championship trophy, the team remained on the stage celebrating for what Harris-Miranda guessed to be about 40 minutes.

"No one wanted to leave," she said.

Two days later, the team gathered together yet again. This time it was on the outdoor pool deck at the football practice facility -- "So Florida, right?" said Harris-Miranda -- to learn its fate for the NCAA postseason. Assigned to Tempe, Arizona, as the top seed in the region, Florida rolled through its two meets to claim the title at the regional finals and punch its ticket to Fort Worth yet again.

WHEN TEBOW VOICED his now immortal words 18 years ago, it was just after the Gators had been handed a stunning defeat by Mississippi, a 22-point underdog, at home -- ending the team's hopes for a perfect season.

At the end of his postgame press conference, Tebow, then the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, delivered the instantly iconic speech. Harris-Miranda was 4 years old at the time, Draser and DiCello were 3, and while McCusker was 7, it's impossible to believe any member of the current Gators gymnastics team has any real memory of the speech when it happened.

But it's something that remains ingrained in the Florida athletic department and Harris-Miranda, who transferred from UCLA following her sophomore season, joked is something that a recruit has to know before committing to the school. And after the disappointing exit in 2025, the Gator gymnasts could relate exactly to what Tebow felt in that moment.

Like Tebow, it was something they didn't want to feel again.

The team doesn't talk about their promise every day at this point. They don't need to. In addition to its visible spot at the entrance of the practice facility, it's something DiCello says is just a core part of the team's identity now. "We live it every day when we step into the gym," she added.

At a recent team meeting, Harris-Miranda remembered looking around the room and appreciating the talent and the determination of those sitting around her.

"I was thinking, 'Literally the best athletes in the country are sitting in this room. We have everything we need right in this room,'" Harris-Miranda said. "It's so motivating. I used to watch Riley McCusker on YouTube all the time and was obsessed with how she did her hair and how she just would train in the gym, her work ethic and all these things, and to now be her teammate, it feels so full circle and I'm so proud to be right here next to her.

"And that's the thing, everyone on this team has this same work ethic, and we all push each other every day to be better. Iron sharpens iron."

On Thursday, the Gators will have the chance to put everything they've learned and worked on over the past year to the test and find their way back to Saturday's championship meet. It wouldn't be the first time in Florida history a team recovered in such a spectacular way from a devastating loss.

After Tebow's Gators lost that game in 2008, they went on to have an undefeated remainder of the season. In the BCS National Championship, Florida defeated top-ranked Oklahoma, 24-14, to reclaim its place atop the sport's hierarchy.

The gymnastics team may have a fairy-tale ending this week. It's of course the ultimate goal -- but it also won't be the only definition of a successful season for those on the team.

"It would be the icing on the cake for sure," McCusker said. "But I remember watching an interview with [Olympic gold-medal winning figure skater] Alysa Liu and she said it wasn't even about the medal for her, it was instead about the performance and the work she put into it. And that's honestly how I feel about this year. If we can go out these last meets and do the best gymnastics we can do and stick together as a team and do it for each other, that's a win to me."