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Katherine Grable runs this town. That’s all there is to it. If Arkansas is going to have a successful 2014 and make Nationals, it will be on the strength of Grable’s 39.675s in the AA. She’s capable of saving rotations with 9.950s and making those events seem suddenly good even though everyone else got a 2. Recall last season that she was out of the lineup for one meet, and the team scored a 193. Don’t do that again. She’s a senior this year, so the Razorbacks need to take advantage of what she brings while they still have the chance.

Unfortunately, Grable cannot compete in every spot in the lineup, so there must be a healthy supply of 9.850s, with a couple 9.9s here and there alongside her, if Arkansas is to stand a chance of matching last year’s Nationals performance and being somewhat competitive with the schools that comfortably score 197. A bunch of these 49.100 rotations will not cut it. The notable freshmen, Amanda Wellick and Samantha Nelson, should help make up for the losses of Amy Borsellino and Kelci Lewis, and expect them to slot into many of those same lineup spots. They’ll need to do so if Arkansas is to continue with the high 196s from the end of last season because the team doesn’t have a plethora of options on a few of these events. Depth will be the watchword. Let’s break it down.

Vault:

So, get this. Katherine Grable does a vault, and it’s not a Yurchenko full. I know! Her Pod (round-off 1/2 on, pike 1/2) makes the world a better place and is one of those routines that should be regularly 9.9 and can get 9.950s. Arkansas often had trouble getting six vaults out there last season, but her score still allowed them to scrape a 49.2.

Beyond Grable, Heather Elswick should be able to provide a comfortably powerful 9.850 with her yfull. The vault lineup will also be buoyed this year by Amanda Wellick, who should have no trouble putting up a competition-worthy yfull, and the return of Scarlett Williams, whose y1/2 has scored into the 9.9s before. Those four vaults should be strong enough to make 49.250 a realistic thought, but once again needing six solid routines instead of four may be cause for worry. We can probably expect Bailee Zumwalde to go early in the lineup and get a 9.775 every week again this year. Other than that, Erin Freier competed last season and eventually got as high as 9.800, and Stephani Canizaro can probably go in a pinch, but there are not a ton of options. They’ll look to get 9.8s out of those first two slots so that the top four aren’t fighting against a deficit and can try to push toward the 49.3s.

Bars:

Speaking of affairs that aren’t super deep, I’m severely concerned about Arkansas on bars. Usually, we would start with Grable’s scoring and try to build around it, but while she is strong on bars as well, it’s her weakest scoring event (that damn hip angle on her bail is helping no one). She can get a 9.850, but it’s not going to cover up a lack of depth here like it could elsewhere.

Shelby Salmon’s strong DLO should keep her in the higher end of the 9.8s as well toward the back of the lineup, and Amanda Wellick can be a similar style bars worker with equivalent scoring potential. Wellick’s Wu Jiani/Li Yuejiu upbringing gives me hope for her potential on this event. As a L10, she showed a bigly big jaeger and a double front dismount.

Unfortunately, a bunch of this Arkansas team (Williams, Zumwalde, Elswick, Dillard) doesn’t do bars, which minimizes the lineup options significantly. Erin Freier has that tall icicle body and used that to her advantage for 9.8s last year, and then there’s maybe Canizaro and new transfer Cailee Ellsworth? Keara Glover competed last year for 9.750s, but she was conspicuously missing from the intrasquad video. Anyone else? I foresee a struggle getting six 9.800-level routines out there this year. Honestly, I’d be happy to see a 49.150 from this group, but it will be tough to keep pace on this event.

Beam:

It’s not often that the beam outlook is more optimistic than the vault and bars outlooks (especially for a team that struggled so mightily here last year), but I could see a fairly strong little lineup developing for Arkansas on beam if they get the hitting under control. It’s the one event where I see clear upgrade potential over last year. In 2013, they had to move Grable to the beginning because of falling issues, and while I don’t love putting the top worker in the leadoff spot, she has the difficulty in that double pike dismount to overcome the usual first-up lowballing. They may sacrifice a smidge in scores, but she can still get 9.9s in the leadoff spot. It’s not as bad as some panic leadoff decisions.

Freier took over the anchor position last year and went as high as 9.900, though her routine can be slightly terrifying; Sydnie Dillard was one of the standout gymnasts last season in terms of hitting after beam falls, being a total Solid Sydnie for 9.850s; Scarlett Williams should be back in the lineup here; and I’m also encouraged by the potential of Wellick and Samantha Nelson, both with better form coming into college on this event than we often see. We can also potentially throw in Shelby Salmon as an option for a 9.800 since she has competed often in the past. There’s not a huge amount of depth, but if they can get Freier, Wellick, Nelson, Williams, Dillard, and Grable out there as the six, I’m happy with that lineup.

Floor:

Let’s just agree that Grable needs to win the floor title this year. Yes? Yes. As on vault, her score can turn a tepid rotation into a big score, and 9.950s are not an unrealistic expectation at all. That means that if the rest of the team can just put together a crop of 9.850s around her, they’re golden. And that should probably be the strategy. 
 
Floor will see the biggest loss in scoring from departures without Borsellino and Lewis, but Nelson has a strong double front mount and Wellick is powerful (though hasn’t always should the most difficulty in the past). I could see them slotting into those roles and keeping pace with last season’s performance while keeping the rest of the lineup the same, using Zumwalde, Elswick, and Dillard. Those are probably the best options, but if they get them all in the lineup, it could be one of the stronger events. They had a 49.285 RQS on floor last year, and I could see that continuing give or take a .025.

Outlook:
As I said, depth is the watchword, and it will define Arkansas’s success. These basic blueprint lineups I put together can be competitive for the most part, but you’ll notice that there are very few options beyond the ones I mentioned. Everyone must remain healthy and hitting for these 49.2ish rotations to happen, otherwise it could get nasty quickly. There will be a bunch of teams this season scoring mid and high 196s, so they’ll need to find a way to outmatch them and avoid the early-lineup 9.7s that seem to define the 13-16 teams but not the 9-12 teams.

I’m not ready to predict Arkansas returning to Nationals this year quite yet. The opportunity is there to match the scoring from last season (though remember that they needed help from Oregon State to advance from Regionals, otherwise they would have been knocked out), but they have little margin and could get passed up by up-and-coming teams like Auburn.

We have the coaches poll, we have our intrasquad videos, we have everything we need to be ready for the season to begin. So, all that remains now is to put together team previews. Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be going through each of the teams in the top 12 of the coaches poll, walking through every event and giving some overall impressions of what to expect this season.

For Oregon State, it was the days of being high and low in 2013. The Beavs began the year with a shocking performance in Cancun that seemed to confirm all of the fears we observers had for them going into the season, but by March they had willed themselves into becoming a 197 team. They were the only team to show up at Pac-12s ready to hit and cruised to a title. But then, in the span of about ten minutes, all that hope came crashing to the ground like so many busted DLOs when three falls on bars obliterated their season in the first rotation of Regionals.

Oregon State was probably the 8th or 9th best team in the country last year all things considered, and the nasty taste of that Regionals performance partially accounts for why both the coaches and I put them down at #12 for the moment, but much of my trepidation also comes from this being a second straight year of losing two top gymnasts. The old guard (Leslie Mak, Olivia Vivian, Makayla Stambaugh, Melanie Jones, and even Laura-Ann Chong and Mandi Rodriguez if we want to go back a little farther), the group that made a national impact and that we associate with the recent strength of Oregon State, is officially gone.

In its place, we’re left with a returning squad of supporting actresses, a gaggle of 9.850s, and much of Oregon State’s story in 2014 will be a journey to find those leading ladies again. Keep a close eye on how the freshmen are contributing in the early months, because this year’s big, talented incoming class provides the opportunity for rebirth and for new stars to emerge. We won’t really know how well OSU can do this year until we see what they bring.

Vault:

The fortune of fortunes for the Beavers on vault is Kelsi Blalock being granted a 5th year. She is the star vaulter for this team and the only consistently huge score among the returning gymnasts. She gets excellent distance on her yfull, and while a slight pike at the end is the main thing keeping her from 10s, she sticks well, so the 9.950s should come and 9.900 should be the expectation.

Beyond Blalock, things get rather challenging in the depth department. Chelsea Tang is usually good for 9.825-9.850, as she is on every event, and Brittany Harris has vaulted well enough to be in the lineup in the past (though she was in and out of it last season). Other than that, there are no other returning gymnasts who have scored in the 9.700+ range in the past, so Oregon State will be looking to freshmen for major contribution all year. Kaytianna McMillan seems the most ripe for 9.9s, competing a strong Y1.5 as a L10 and managing a 9.850 for it at JO Nationals. Whether she ends up with a 1.5 or a full (I’d go with full), she should give the lineup a boost. I can also see Maddie Gardiner, who never featured on vault as an elite but has a solid Yfull, and Megan Jimenez figuring here, but this lineup will be relying on a select few to get by.

Bars:

I was quite skeptical about OSU’s status on bars last year post-Mak and Vivian, but for the most part they did quite well (even though it was the Achilles heel in the end) and managed a program-high score on the event at Pac-12s, which I would not have pegged going into the season. Several new people stepped into the lineup, and the team continued to thrive, even bettering the performance from 2012. It will be interesting to see if the trend of consistently reinventing a strong bars group can continue this year now that coach John Carney has moved on to Missouri and they’ve bled another top routine in Stambaugh’s. 

Four routines return from last year’s postseason lineup, and in particular Erika Aufiero emerged as a strong contributor last season with a clean and powerful routine, so I’m looking forward to seeing her work here along with, as on every event, newbies Gardiner and McMillan popping in. Gardiner didn’t really excel on bars as an elite, but there is enough potential in her work (meaning: she does stalders, so I’m sold) that I could see a strong NCAA routine being weaved together for her to help raise the event above the rather 49.200 quality we might see otherwise.

Beam:

Oh, beam. I may have called it last preseason that Oregon State would get knocked out at Regionals, but I thought it would be because of beam, not bars. The Beavers overperformed my expectations on beam and, as has happened the past several seasons, they were able to pull together something strong enough to get into the 49.2s by the end of the year. I could certainly see the 49.2s landscape continuing this year, and I’m actually a bit more optimistic about Oregon State on beam this time around than I have been recently, primarily because of Maddie Gardiner.

I mentioned that Oregon State is going to be in the market for stars, and one of those new starring routines should be Gardiner’s beam. She has superior difficulty and a wide range of challenging skills to select from, but the most remarkable thing about her beam work is that she performs both a wolf turn and a side somi and makes them not ug-o. That, my friends, is a public service. Beyond that, there are several workable 9.8s returning from the rest of the group, and other new Canadian Taylor Ricci could contribute here. This is also Chelsea Tang’s best-scoring piece, so look for her to figure near the end of the lineup as well.

Floor:

It’s hard to know what to make of this floor rotation at the moment because Jones and Stambaugh were this event last season. They both boasted brilliant floor routines and could always be relied upon for 9.900s, at the very least. How many times did they save this team from a 9.7 last year? The team RQS was 49.190, which means those 9.9s often single-handedly made floor a positive event. Without them, the Beavers are returning a lot of 9.825s featuring mostly rudis and 2.5s and double backs, with Kelsi Blalock usually showing the strongest routine of that bunch. While they shouldn’t have too many problems putting together a lineup, they’ll be in search of the big routine to wake the judges up and take the team out of the 49.1s.

That’s why I expect McMillan’s strong full-in that she mounted with in JO to be significant here. It’s the kind of tumbling pass with big difficulty and amplitude that the team is missing right now. 

Outlook:
Oregon State in 2014 is a team that will need to rebuild some lineups, find new 9.9s, and integrate a lot of new gymnasts in places they haven’t competed before in order to make up for departed scores, so don’t be surprised if it’s a process. Some 194s in the early months would not be unusual as they try to work out who the contributors are. 

But I’m excited about these freshmen, and the potential in the new class is much greater than it has been for several seasons now. If they thrive, high 196s to low 197s should be doable by the end of the year. The Beavers are currently ranked as the final school to get into Nationals, and I can see them hovering around that 10-12, back end of Nationals, spot for much of the season. This team should be capable of recovering from last season’s meltdown and advancing to Nationals again. 

Over the weekend, a few top teams displayed their wares to adoring crowds of dozens, and like the timely person I am, I’m now getting around to summing up what happened.

Michigan held an exhibition meet against Central Michigan, complete with live video, commentary, and live scoring. It was a bit like the season had come early, and I was altogether too excited by that. When I do the team previews, I’ll go into more depth about how the lineups look on each event, but for now let’s talk about floor because it was the clear highlight. The team showed eight routines, as most do in these preseason meets, and all eight mounted with E skills and showed a very high level of tumbling overall. The six competition routines could certainly be the final lineup, and there were fewer endurance issues than I expected.

Vault and bars looked pretty impressive for this point in the season as well, with seven good lineup contenders on each event (seven isn’t ideal, but it’s workable). In the training videos, Austin Sheppard has been an unexpected bars highlight. Here, she went over on her straddle back and had to correct and cowboyed her double front, but the piked tkatchev was huge and the potential is there. Beam was the worry, surprising no one, with some seriously wobbly performances, which was reflected in the scores. Still, it’s just December. The big positive on beam, however, was Talia Chiarelli, who performed the most secure routine of the eight competitors and worked with a confidence we never saw from her on this event as an elite. I was very concerned about her on beam, so this was pleasing to see. Let’s hope she’s one of those gymnasts who gains confidence as the more difficult elite skills are removed from her routine.

With the exception of Briley Casanova, who has been out with concussion issues, all of the returning gymnasts from last season look like strong bets to make their events again. Brooke Parker also appeared, exhibitioning on two events like she’s right back at Alabama.

In other news, Double Front has a whole mess of videos from Oklahoma’s intrasquad for your perusal. Event winners were Kmieciak on vault, Spears on bars, Mooring and Clark on beam, and Spears on floor.

UCLA also held a preseason celebration, but as is normal with UCLA in the preseason, it’s hard to draw any impressions about actual form from this show, other than that Sadiqua Bynum’s DLO was a nice surprise and that Angi Cipra is clearly the new Val favorite. Sorry, everyone else.