The bus ride from Kent back to Decatur High School was silent. The only noise was the calm roar of the bus engine humming along.

The Decatur Golden Gators gymnastics team just suffered a disappointing performance on Dec. 14 at Kent-Meridian, so much so that silence was the best medicine — until it wasn’t anymore.

The silence was broken by none other than Decatur’s three team captains, who called a players-only meeting, right there on the bus. The results have yielded a change in attitude and focus for the Gators going into 2017 and their first meet on Wednesday at the Tahoma Invite.

“It was incredible to see,” Decatur coach Jen Hunt said of the meeting. “This was something completely handled by the players. We were there but had nothing to do with it. We kind of listened, but we wanted to let them work it out.”

Prior to the bus ride home, it was a tough night for Decatur during their second meet of the season. Gymnasts weren’t as crisp as they were in practice, and scores weren’t as high as expected.

Afterward, Golden Gator team captains Sydney Victor, Catherine Huynh and Chantel Thomas had enough of the silence, enough of the negative energy.

The three huddled together and decided to speak to the team and informed Hunt about their intentions.

“It was really strong, a lot more intense than usual, but I think all the girls really needed to hear it,” Victor said of the meeting.

After the sub-par performance at Kent-Meridian, the three captains thought the team gave far less than 100 percent in the meet at Kent Meridian.

Victor and the other captains needed to let their teammates know that particular approach is unacceptable.

Victor, a district qualifier in 2015, said the captains reminded their teammates that was only the second meet of the season, and it was too early to be letting off the gas.

“I think that it really helped,” Hunt said of the meeting. “I think they were motivated more than anything by what happened. There were some situations that produced scores that were lower than they had the week before, so their own disappointment drove them to step up and have the desire to do more.”

Hunt said she and the coaches felt the intensity of the conversation but never felt a need to step in.

Victor and her fellow captains spent a good portion of the 26-minute bus ride discussing specific examples that doomed the team that night. They also went into great detail on how to fix them and improve once the season picked back up.

The captains’ speech ended with a question. The three captains wanted to know just how far their teammates were willing to go to be successful.

The gymnasts decided they were going to push for as many state qualifiers as possible from that moment on, but they acknowledged it was going to take a lot of work.

“That talk encouraged us to just do more — have more workouts and try to build the physical strength of this team,” Victor said. “We decided we needed to do a lot more together, as a team — just to grow as a team.”

But Victor, Huynh and Thomas knew the first step to accomplishing the goal was to lead by example.

So, the trio decided to burn the midnight oil.

When the bus reached its final destination, the three went to work. They stayed up late making posters, many with simple messages of encouragement, while others asked questions: What are you doing at practice today? When you’re not on an event, how can you better your conditioning?

The three agreed to get up early the next morning and get to practice before anyone else so they could hang the signs of encouragement.

A few days later, the team took over the Gator Dome with a two-hour practice session. The day also happened to be the first day of winter break.

As they’d promised on the bus, Decatur gymnastics is all in, doing everything together.

Teammates watched others routines, offering words of encouragement. Others worked together on the balance beam and uneven bars, all doing things in pairs or small groups.

Victor said she felt the talk on the bus was well received, and the Gators responded with more dedication, practice and doing things together both in and out of the gym, which hopefully means no more quiet rides home.

“With the way we’ve responded, I really think we can make it to state,” Victor said. “We have so many girls open to trying new events. You can just tell we are all on the same page and really want this.”