Coach Walid Mustafa called it "a real awakening''.

His team will remember it as the thrill of a lifetime.

And no matter the Island's four girls finished dead last at their first appearance in a competition of this magnitude, there was no denying Sunday's performance at the resplendent Putra Stadium in Bukit Jalil was a milestone in Bermuda gymnastics.

As Mustafa explained, neither he nor his gymnasts had travelled to Kuala Lumpur with high expectations but rather to get a taste of international competition at the top level. And when similarly small teams such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Barbados failed to show, as had been promised, there was never much doubt where the Island team would finish.

"We would have acquitted ourselves well against the smaller countries. But we knew we couldn't compete with teams like England, Canada, Australia and Northern Ireland,'' said Mustafa.

"All in all I'm pretty happy. I think when we stepped out on the floor we realised this wasn't Kansas any more. This was a real awakening. It was more of an impact stepping onto the gymnastics floor than marching into the opening ceremony. It was electric, it was scary, everything I hoped it was going to be.'' Inside the stadium, some 15,000 partisan fans screamed, clapped and stomped their feet each time a Malaysian girl walked to the floor and they continued to raise the roof throughout the routine. Bermuda suffered the misfortune of having to compete alongside the hosts and at times, Mustafa admitted, the occasion proved overwhelming.

"They were a little more nervous than usual on the first event,'' said the coach. "Beam is their strong event and we had more falls than we want to remember and I think that was the difference between whether we would have caught up with (ninth-placed) Namibia which was our goal from the beginning.

"We averaged a loss of seven-tenths of a point per child and I credit that to nerves. Laura (Murphy) and Christina (White) never fall on the beam and this time their falls cost us seven-tenths deduction for each, and Jenny (Wright) got a little flustered as well, so I'd say `yes' nerves did play a big part.

"But we got the worst draw that you can get. The best is vault, bars, beam, floor and then you rotate from there. We got beam first. But we're the new guys on the block and we have to pay our dues.'' Mustafa also agreed that the noise had repeatedly distracted his girls.

"They couldn't hear my corrections and they would be two feet from me and listening as hard as they could and they still couldn't hear what I was saying. It was a little intimidating for us already, everybody had the jitters and all of a sudden in the middle of a routine you hear this great roar. It distracted me and I wasn't even on the equipment.'' Neither Murphy, White nor Leila Wadson posted scores high enough to propel them into the individual competition, which disappointed Mustafa who had hoped possibly two or three of the team would have earned a place in either the individual All Around or the individual Apparatus finals.

"Kids out there had good days and bad days and that's what gymnastics is all about. At the end of the day we've got to say we performed as well as we could. And it's a day they'll always remember.'' MID FLIGHT -- Bermuda's Jenny Wright performs on the balance beam during the women's team event.

GYMNASTICS GYM