Some pre-Thanksgiving notes.

Watching meets in 2015
Fair warning with a month still to go before the season: There will be changes to the way we watch NCAA gymnastics meets this year, mostly involving the SEC. 

In emerging-from-the-cave-to-finally-see-the-light news, the debut of the SEC Network means that we’ll actually have the chance to watch SEC gymnastics meets live on a television this season. Who would have ever thought?

It’s not a ton of live meets (and it still doesn’t include the SEC Championship), but it’s something. The Pac-12 Network also had a fairly scanty collection of meets its first season before expanding every year since then to the point where the majority of conference meets will be on TV this year. UCLA had 3 televised meets in the first year of P12N, but had 7 last year, and has 8 this year.

In addition to the TV schedule, a large number of SEC meets will be streamed on SEC Network+, part of the ESPN family of streaming. Not all schools have announced their full streaming schedules, but we do know that all Georgia and Alabama (and almost all LSU) home meets that aren’t televised on the SEC Network will be streamed on SECN+. As far as I know, anyone who has ESPN as part of a TV package can sign in to WatchESPN for access to SECN+ [EDIT: See comment below]. So, this is good news for people who live in the US and have a television, and bad news for people who don’t.

Elsewhere, All-Access/U-Live has finally realized that it had a terrible, confusing, nondescript name and has rebranded itself College Sports Live, which is much clearer. The monthly subscription is also cheaper than it used to be, just $9.95 a month now instead of $17 or whatever it was, which is not how prices are supposed to go, but great. The only question is whether it’s even worth it anymore. As the big conference networks grow, fewer and fewer teams are part of this service. Dilemma.

Scheduling
Florida @ Alabama and UCLA @ Utah are at the exact same time on the exact same day this season. Worthless.

Feet apart on landing
One of the bigger scoring complaints that gets tossed around during the NCAA season is about landing stuck dismounts with feet apart. Are the judges taking this deduction? Should it be a deduction? Should it be a deduction only for the school I want to lose? So, I thought people might be interested in the clarification given by the joint technical committee this spring (which can be found in a recent newsletter if you want to read the whole thing).

Regarding landings on vault and dismounts on uneven bars and balance beam: No deduction applied for landing with feet a maximum of hip-width apart, provided that they join (slide) the heels together on the controlled extension. If the entire foot/feet are sliding or lifted off the floor to join, it is considered a small step and a deduction of up to 0.10 would be applied. Landing with feet further than hip-width apart will receive a 0.10 deduction. A deduction of up to 0.10 would be applied for landing with feet staggered (one foot in front of the other).

Keep in mind that when a deduction is “up to,” the full “up to” value is almost never taken in NCAA. Otherwise, the scores would be more like JO.

Training
Training videos have been happening for the last month or so. Some teams are going the full instagram or vine route with their training this year, so if you’re a fan of blips of out-of-context layout stepouts, check out the various team’s various accounts. I recommend Oklahoma for their frequent videos going, “This is our ninth-best beam routine, and it’s still more beautiful than anything you’ve ever accomplished in your whole life.”

Utah has some tumbling, bars dismounts, and Dabritz beam going on, so we can pretend she’s going to make the lineup this year. 

LSU is showing off casual DTYs and acro amplitude

Georgia beaming and vaulting

No, I hadn’t forgotten about UCLA. The Bruins just have eleventy billion new (and old-new) gymnasts this year, many of whom are going to be wait-and-see types, so I was putting off talking about them. Of all the giant freshman classes, this is the giantest. We may be returning to the days when UCLA has a hundred walk-ons on the roster that no one has ever seen, may not actually exist, and who disappear after a season. Still, here we are. It’s time to meet the new Bruins as well as run through the notable roster entrances and exits on some other teams.

UCLA
UCLA didn’t make Super Six last year for the first time since 2009, and it’s not going to be any easier this year after the losses of Olivia Courtney and Syd Sawa. Courtney and Sawa accounted for 7 routines from last year’s postseason lineup, and while that’s not all that many compared to some other teams, these were mostly significant routines. Besides Danusia Francis’s beam and Sam Peszek’s everything, Courtney and Sawa accounted for the rest of the realistic 9.9s in 2014, so the Bruins will need to find new 9.9s (particularly floor and vault 9.9s) from somewhere.

The 9.9 scenario is the main question I have about this freshman class. It’s a class of possibilities and yet-to-be-honed raw potential, and I expect to hear a lot this season about how rewarding this class has been to coach. As part of that potential, I see a TON of 9.800s floating around (if UCLA is putting up consistent 9.7s in lineups again this year, they will have only themselves to blame—or not training on podium, or whatever), but are there enough 9.9s?

That’s why Peng Peng Lee‘s comeback is more than essential for UCLA. She is a glorious ray of hope made out of dreams and wishes and 9.9s, and at her best, is capable of partnering with Peszek to lift this team to national competitiveness. Even if they’re taking it easy with Peng now that her knee is made out of scalpels (I don’t know how surgery works), she can still be a huge boost to bars and beam, which will limit the expectations placed on the freshmen. I suppose Peng sort of counts as a freshman because she has never done a routine for UCLA, but at this point she’s one of the oldest members of the team. I’m not profiling her as one of the freshmen, especially because I did last year and then UCLA announced she was out for the year again the very next day. I’m a jinx. Let’s stop talking about it and move on to the real freshmen.

Pua Hall is the most recognizable name in the group, having competed as a junior elite in 2009 and 2010. While I do wonder how many big-impact routines there will be in this class, one of those big routines should be Hall’s vault, especially for a team that put up way too many 9.725s in the first three spots last season. (In case you’re wondering, the correct number of 9.725s is zero.) 

She has been competing that 1.5 for approximately forever, and it’s quite good. She won vault in her division at JO Nationals in 2013 and brings the power, distance, and form for a usable score here depending on which vault is selected for her. (I would think full, but this team needs someone doing more difficulty than a yfull. They haven’t had that since Zam’s occasional Lopez and McCullough’s 1.5. It’s time for another 1.5). Hall will need to be hanging out with Peszek at the back of that lineup.

Floor is probably the other likely area for Hall to compete for a spot. She shows a double arabian as part of a solid-enough repertoire of tumbling, and now that she’s in Val Land, her general foundation of style and presence should be sufficiently UCLA-ified into a true floor performance. As a quick mention, bars has been Hall’s weak event in her career, but in kind of a McKayla Maroney way, she has a randomly huge gienger nestled in there. I’m vaguely hoping they can work some magic on that routine so we get to see the gienger. 

Like most of her peers, Melissa Metcalf competed as a junior elite back when she was a day old, but she has been squarely in the L10 ranks for a while now. She’s one of those incoming gymnasts who is possibly believable on multiple events, but she’ll be in a fight against the several other people who are possibly believable on those same events and have been drifting in and out of the lineups the last season or two. (I mean a metaphorical fight. A fight of sticking landings. Miss Val has not instituted a lineup fight club. Yet.) That said, the main area where Metcalf had success as a JO gymnast is bars.

Metcalf won bars at nationals in her division in 2013 with that routine, and she has some toe point and stalder action going for her that warms my heart. There are enough high-level tools here that this routine should become a thing. 

Sonya Meraz is an interesting one. She’s an All-Olympia gymnast who has come on strong in recent years and even progressed far enough that she attempted to qualify elite for the first time early this year. She didn’t come very close to getting the qualifying score (bars isn’t going to fare well under the elite COP), but her trajectory is unusual in that the decision to try elite usually comes early in the junior days rather than on the eve of NCAA gymnastics.

Of note, at her elite qualifying event, Meraz did beat Alyssa Pritchett on each event, so by the reflexive property of elite qualifying, if Pritchett was making vault and floor lineups at the end of her UCLA career, so should Meraz. Ish? She’ll be helped by developing that elite routine composition, particularly performing a full-in on floor now (which may set her apart from all of the double pikers in this class) and upgrading from the half to the full on vault.

Janay Honest scored the intra-team upset of the day this spring to qualify to JO Nationals ahead of her now-teammate Metcalf, who was expected to advance given her strong finish in 2013. Honest placed well mostly through consistency, but she was also buoyed by a high-level vault score. Vault is where Honest has always excelled, and given the lack of depth on vault in recent years, it’s clear why UCLA is bringing in so many gymnasts like her who have excelled on vault. The height she gets on that full puts her ahead of most of the other members of this UCLA class.

Amplitude is the name of the game for Honest, a quality she brings to her double pike and tuck on floor as well, but I’m including this video of her beam routine below solely for the moment when that other girl realizes she’s right in front of the camera and melts into the floor. Magic.

But wait! There’s more! Several more. Rechelle Dennis is also joining this class, another gymnast who perhaps unexpectedly qualified for JO Nationals this year, getting in by virtue of strong scores  on floor and bars. Those are traditionally the events where she scores well. Much like Honest, Dennis doesn’t show big difficulty on floor, but she has some pop in her tumbling and lands her double saltos high and comfortably.

LaNiesha-Jopre Irvin is another in the walk-on parade who may hang around to add to the numbers on vault with her Yurchenko full. She usually places highest on vault with consistent 9.5s and 9.6s in JO competitions. The final newbie is Karli Dugas, and with her, I have no idea.

Someone else who could end up being an essential part of the Bruin team in 2015 is the old-new gymnast Jordan Williams. Williams spent the last four years competing for Arizona and is now starting grad school at UCLA. Because she got injured in January last year and missed pretty much the whole season, she was able to get an extra year of eligibility that she’s using for UCLA. I was watching when she got injured last season after slipping off the bars going for her double front dismount, and it was a very scary fall. (And then the camera immediately cut away and her injury was never mentioned so no one knew what was going on or how serious it was. Unacceptable. What, are we just supposed to pretend it didn’t happen?)

Williams is the type who can provide a 9.825 on most events when called upon, and in UCLA’s mission to bolster depth this season, that could be very significant. She consistently competed bars for Arizona with useful scores, and her vault was going well last year before the injury. Both events were safely in 9.8 territory, so I can see her being used on those pieces as necessary.

ILLINOIS 
OUT – 8 postseason routines
-Amber See (vault, beam, floor) – 17th in nation on floor, 10.000 on vault
-Sarah Fiedler (bars, beam, floor)
-Elizabeth McNabb (bars, beam)

IN
-Bridget Hodan – placed in the top 5 on beam at JO Nationals in 2012 and 2013
-Jordyn Givens

OREGON STATE 
OUT – 5 postseason routines
-Blalock (vault, beam, floor before injury in 2014) – 6th in nation on vault in 2013
-Harris (vault, bars, beam floor)
-Casey (bars)

IN
-Risa Perez (transfer) – consistent 9.800-9.875s for Arizona State on beam and floor as the team’s best beamer, and obviously best floor performer.    
-Silvia Colussi-Pelaez (transfer) – recorded 9.7s in competition on VT and FX for Florida, frequent exhibitions, could contribute competitive scores in the AA. Still hoping for the side aerial. 
-Jamie Radermacher (transfer) – scored 9.775s on vault and floor when competing for Eastern Michigan in 2012.
-Dani Dessaints – top 10 on bars and floor at JO Nationals in 2013
-Shireen Khamedoost – 3rd on beam at 2014 JO NIT, 1st on bars at 2014 Regionals

AUBURN
OUT – 0 postseason routines

IN
-Abigail Milliet – 8th AA at 2013 P&G Championships, 56.850 day 1 score, 3rd on beam day 1 behind Biles and Ross.
-Sarah Garcia – 1st at 2013 JO NIT Senior B, top 5 on every event
-Kennedy Finister – 1st at 2014 JO NIT Senior D, winning bars and beam
-Cara Stricklin
-Brooke Bray
-Blake Jones

MINNESOTA
OUT – 8 postseason routines
-Kayla Slechta – (vault, bars, floor) – 9.950 high on vault, 9.925 high on floor
-Kylie Schermann – (vault, beam, floor) – 9.950 high on beam, 9.875 RQS on vault and floor
-Dusti Russell – (beam)
-Justine Cherwink – (floor)

IN
-Bailey Gardner – 4th at JO Nationals Senior A in 2013, career high 9.925 on vault
-Ciara Gardner – 6th at JO Nationals Senior B in 2013
-Hannah Hitchcock
-Abby DeMuse
-Rachel Rowland

PENN STATE
OUT – 9 postseason routines
Kassidy Stauder – (vault, bars, beam, floor) – bars and beam anchor, team-high RQS on those events
Randi Lau – (vault, beam, floor)
Lindsay Musgrove (vault, floor)

IN
Lauren Li – Texas state champion Senior C, top 10 vault and floor at JO Nationals, career high 9.7s on vault, bars, beam
Chanen Raygoza – competed as a junior elite, has been injured forever
Briannah Tsang – Canadian elite, usually places best on vault and floor
Oni Timothy – 6th on vault, 11th on floor at 2013 JO Nationals,

ARKANSAS
OUT – 9 postseason routines
Katherine Grable (vault, bars, beam, and floor) – she’s Katherine Grable
Shelby Salmon (bars, beam) – team #2 on bars, 9.845 RQS
Bailee Zumwalde (vault, floor)
Scarlett Williams (vault)

IN
Braie Speed – standout junior in 2009-2010, flirted with elite, excels on bars
Paige Zaziski – 4th at JO Nationals Senior C, 1st on vault, top 5 bars and floor
Leah MacMoyle
Kathleen York
Mia Bargiacchi

We’re getting there. NLI week is (pretty much) behind us—I’m looking at you Alabama—and slowly but surely, we’re moving toward the coaches’ poll and preseason intrasquads time of year. But for oday, I’m looking at the freshmen from Alabama and Michigan. Among the top 10 teams in the country, these two freshman classes will be the most essential for their schools because of how much scoring potential both these teams have lost since last season. These freshmen must contribute significant routines (in both quality and number) this year.

ALABAMA

Alabama is the team I’m keenest to watch to start the 2015 season. Not only have they lost a legendary head coach, but they’ve also lost 11 of the 24 routines from Super Six last year. The 2015 team will be a brand new Tide in all the ways. This could go a lot of different directions.

As for the newbies, Alabama brings in a fairly solid freshman class in 2015, even if it’s not brimming with routines. There aren’t 11 competition-level new performances in this group, but that’s OK. This freshman group will not be expected to make up the whole Jacob/Milliner/Demeo deficit. With Kayla Williams coming back from injury and several usable routines that didn’t make the lineups last year, Alabama shouldn’t be hurting too much for depth on the majority of events, which will take some pressure off this new group. (Helpfully, Gymtide has done a rundown of all the routines shown in the recent intrasquad to give a comprehensive look at current team depth. It’s worth a read.)

Still, I do expect moments of essential freshman contribution, particularly from Mackenzie Brannan. As is the theme for the freshmen from these two schools, she competed as a junior elite last quad before making the switch back to L10, so she has the skills on each event to be a realistic contender for four lineups.

Vault

Bars

Beam

Floor

Let’s start with beam because it has been an occasional issue. Brannan would have won her division easily at JO Nationals the last two years if not for falls on beam, so consistency will be a topic of conversation. Regardless of whether those problems manifest themselves in NCAA, I do expect her to see time on beam because her work there is on the same elite level as the other events and because Alabama needs to find some new beamers somewhere.

That said, the places where I expect Brannan’s contribution to be the most significant and frequent are vault and bars. That Yurchenko 1.5 is crisp and clean. Her legs are firmly together in the air and she completes the vault quite easily. I could certainly see retaining the 1.5, but either way, she should be in the lineup. On bars, Brannan’s work is made for NCAA. Look at those handstands. Yes. She has cleaned up her bars routine significantly since junior elite days, and almost everything is precise these days. Put her on the Jacob/Demeo bam-bam stuck DLO program, and this should be a back half of the lineup routine.

Floor will also be an option for Brannan. She performs a strong double arabian and has a number of other tumbling pass choices, as most elite-to-L10 gymnasts do, and even though the form on the tumbling can get scrappy from time to time, I don’t expect it to be a problem. This routine can contend for the 6, though with a number of 9.850-9.875 routines that didn’t make the final lineup last season (Jetter, Aja Sims, etc.) it won’t be as easy to make the floor lineup as it might seem given the gaps after last year.

Joining Brannan is Nichole Guerrero, who has been near the top of the JO class on certain events for several years now, particularly on vault where she once again placed in the top 5 of her division at JO Nationals this year. She’s an efficient little powerhouse, and her strengths are those we normally expect from little powerhouses.

Vault

Beam

Guerrero’s biggest asset on her 1.5 is her stickitude. There are a bunch of youtube videos of her sticking 1.5s in competition, and we know that when you stick a 1.5 in NCAA, it’s pretty much an auto-9.900 if not higher. Alabama has lost Milliner’s stalwart 1.5 in the anchor position, but they’re bringing in a couple possible replacements that should slot into the lineup comfortably. Guerrero also boasts a solid floor routine with a piked full in and well-executed twisting elements. She’s another who may or may not see some any on floor. Her tumbling is not as amplitudinous (word) as most of her peers, which may put her lower down the depth chart.

I’m also interested in this beam routine because, like on vault, she’s a sticker. She has that barani (someone needs to take up the Kim Jacob legacy) and tends to nail her acro skills very securely, which is everything. Counterpoint: It’s not a flighty, floaty routine, and she’s very close to the beam on her skills. It could go either way. 

Kiana Winston should have been the star of this class because she’s exceptionally talented. She was on the same track as Texas Dreams teammates Kennedy Baker and Peyton Ernst back in the day until a series of injuries, the most serious being a torn ACL, stalled her progression. She finally returned to competition for a nanosecond in 2014, but it appears the lingering effects of three years of constant injuries mean she won’t be the major contributor she could have been for Alabama in 2015.

Floor

Ideally she’ll be a potential competitor on all events in future seasons. She has worked on the leaps and flexibility recently to give her floor and beam routines that extra oomph. It wouldn’t just be about the tumbling passes for her. She also shows very comfortable releases on bars (her pak is a joy) that can be developed into a high-scoring routine as the details are honed.

Also joining the team is walk-on Jennie Loeb, and while we shouldn’t expect her to make any lineups, I do enjoy her beam work. The acro is very solid and she too has a realistic barani. Plenty of teams would take her routine, but Alabama is unlikely to be one. 

MICHIGAN
As with Alabama, there is work to be done if Michigan is going to return to the level of the last two seasons. Except with Michigan, the situation is more extreme. They’ve lost half of their postseason routines from last year, including a majority of their top-scoring performances. Few teams could handle losing Sampson, Beilstein, Zakharia, and Gies all at the same time. The freshman quintet will need to contribute a bunch of routines right away, though like Alabama, they should not have to shoulder the entire burden. The injury returns of Austin Sheppard and Annette Miele should help account for 4-5 of those lost routines. That still means a lot will be expected of the newbies.

We’ll start with Brianna Brown, the CGA elite who made a verbal commitment to Georgia before skipping town after the coaching shakeup. She’s the most well-known of the group and the most likely to contribute on four events. Brown competed elite through the 2012 season before jumping down to L10 where she finished 7th in her division at JO Nationals, ranking in the top 10 everywhere but vault.

Vault

Bars

Beam

Floor (elite)

Brown has placed well on bars these last few years in JO, and she clearly has tools that can be sculpted into a strong NCAA routine. The toe-on tkatchev and pak are both at NCAA level already, so combine those with some crisp handstands and you’re already 90% there. She has dismounted with just a double back at several competitions in the last couple years, but in the past she has added a full twist to that. I assume it won’t be a problem to step up her dismount game to make this a competitive routine.

Beam, beam, beam. I’ll be focusing a lot on beam for these Michigan freshmen because that event needs the most help right now. Where will this team be without Sampson and Gies? They have about 5 usable returning routines, but that includes a few 9.7s, which means they’ll need several realistic options from this new group to become competitive. Brown should provide one. She has the skill set and no major areas of weakness. Stylistically, she’s very deliberate and occasionally tight in a way that’s reminiscent of her CGA contemporaries Jetter and Whitcomb. She looks slightly terrified the whole time (I think that’s on the CGA crest), but there’s still reason to think this routine could be a thing. 

On floor, Brown has not shown much difficulty lately, sticking with D passes instead of the pike full in she showed back in the elite days, so I wonder how competitive her work will be on a team that was E-pass central last season (though they won’t be as spoiled for choice this year). Even though the difficulty hasn’t been there, Brown still does have adequate amplitude and comfortably completes the D passes she has been showing.

Next, we have Lauren Marinez. I feel sort of bad because the only two memories I have of her competing are the nasty fall she took at the Nastia Cup one year on floor and that time at 2011 Nationals when she fell onto the bars and then did a DLO to her face. But there are good parts too. I promise. It’s not all horrific falls.

Bars

Beam

Floor

The best part is beam. As mentioned, Michigan needs beam routines, and this is a very good one. Marinez has the tools to be a star. Great form, great scoring potential. Elegant and precise. Put this routine in the lineup, and it gets better. There are a couple other areas where Marinez can contribute, but those routines are not quite as necessary for the team as beam is. On bars she shows good rhythm through her elements and some refined qualities here and there, so if they can develop a workable release for her, it could be a routine. Even though Michigan has lost several strong bars workers, I’m not really worried about them on bars because they’re always magicking up routines from nowhere anyway (see Beilstein, Sheppard).

Michigan also signed Northern Irish international India McPeak late in the process, and she automatically gets 10 bonus points for being from Northern Ireland and an additional 10 bonus points for doing a back full on beam. McPeak is possibly in the mix on floor as well with a double tuck full and several other D pass options, but it’s mostly about beam for her.

Beam

Did I mention the tuck full? Even if they decide not to use it because of extreme risk, she has other strong acro elements like the punch front that should do nicely. I hope she shows enough consistency to be a worthwhile option because I’m excited to see what routine they put together for her.

Also hopping into the clown car of new Wolverines is Ilana Gordon with her powerful gymnastics. She has some pop in those legs. The question across all the events will be form and finesse, but that’s often the case with incoming gymnasts who evolve during their NCAA careers. The most likely event for her should be vault. She has shown just a yhalf, but it’s a good yhalf. She has enough height and distance and lands securely enough to avoid any “just a yhalf” scoring.

Vault

Rounding out the group is Cailee Hills, and she’s another where it’s almost impossible for us to know where she’ll be because she has been injured for so long. She hasn’t competed in several years, but before that she was scoring very competitively at the JO level. The potential is there for her to be a real contributor if things work out the way they were going in 2011-2012. She had a very clean yfull, showed precise acrobatic skills on beam, and finished in the top 5 on both bars and beam in Junior C in 2012.