A. European Championship schedule

Wednesday, April 19	Watch
3:00am ET/12:00am PT – Men’s Qualification Subdivision 1 Featuring: Oliver Hegi (SUI), Eddy Yusof (SUI), Jimmy Verbaeys (BEL)	LINK
7:00am ET/4:00am PT – Men’s Qualification Subdivision 2 Featuring: Alex Shatilov (ISR), Krisztian Berki (HUN), Marcel Nguyen (GER), Lukas Dauser (GER), Nikita Ignatyev (RUS), Artur Dalaloyan (RUS), James Hall (GBR), Joe Fraser (GBR), Artur Davtyan (ARM), Igor Radivilov (UKR), Robert Seligman (CRO), Filip Ude (CRO)	LINK
11:00am ET/8:00am PT – Men’s Qualification Subdivision 3 Featuring: Oleg Verniaiev (UKR), David Belyavskiy (RUS), Nikita Nagornyy (RUS), Marian Dragulescu (ROU), Eleftherios Petrounias (GRE), Rayderley Zapata (ESP), Bart Deurloo (NED), Sam Oldham (GBR), Frank Baines (GBR), Dom Cunningham (GBR), Courtney Tulloch (GBR), Ferhat Arican (TUR), Pablo Braegger (SUI), Christian Baumann (SUI)	LINK
Thursday, April 20	Watch
3:00am ET/12:00am PT – Women’s Qualification Subdivision 1 Featuring: Great Britain (2), France (2), Hungary (2)	LINK
6:30am ET/3:30am PT – Women’s Qualification Subdivision 2 Featuring: Russia (2), Romania (2), Netherlands (2), Germany (2), Italy (2)	LINK
9:00am ET/6:00am PT – Women’s Qualification Subdivision 3 Featuring: Great Britain (2), Netherlands (2), France (2), Italy (2), Belgium (2), Switzerland (2)	LINK
11:30am ET/8:30am PT – Women’s Qualification Subdivision 4 Featuring: Russia (2), Romania (2), Germany (2), Hungary (2), Switzerland (2), Spain (2), Alma Kuc (POL, Cal 2018)	LINK
Friday, April 21	Watch
6:00am ET/3:00am PT – Men’s All-Around Final	LINK
10:30am ET/7:30am PT – Women’s All-Around Final	LINK
Saturday, April 22	Watch
6:30am ET/3:30am PT – Event Finals Day 1 Men’s Floor Women’s Vault Men’s Horse Women’s Bars Men’s Rings	LINK
Sunday, April 23	Watch
6:30am ET/3:30am PT – Event Finals Day 2 Men’s Vault Women’s Beam Men’s PBars Women’s Floor Men’s HBar	LINK

The European Championships have quite charitably decided to take place this week and weekend in order to soften our descent into the abyss that is the NCAA season being over. They’re like the nicotine patch of gymnastics. We need it. A lot.

All the sessions will be streamed on the UEG site for free. Yippee! Less yippee: I couldn’t get the replays of men’s qualification to actually…you know…play (at least for now), but Flo also has the rights to broadcast the streaming—behind the paywall—and I could get the first subdivision replay to play there, if you’re looking.

So, everything’s going great so far.

Judging by twitter, the live scoring was a catastrophe during the men’s (as in…we still don’t have official results for the men or start lists for the women…), so expect heads to roll if it’s not resolved for tomorrow. That’s what Game of Thrones gifs were invented for, right?

B. Results

Saint Oleg appears to have had just an OK day in qualification (only making five event finals like a LOSER) but still managed first place in the AA with 85.966 because St. Oleg and because Europe. He’s in over Dalaloyan in 2nd, James Hall of GB in 3rd, and Oliver Hegi in 4th, who are all bunched in the 84s and low 85s. I’m happy to see the next generation of GBers get a look at Euros this year.

In event final qualification, everything is OK because Alex Shatilov qualified third into floor. Dragulescu also had a solid showing, qualifying in the top two on both vault and floor, and Lankin hit the triple back to make floor finals as well. The world continues to spin on horse and rings with Berki and Petrounias taking the top spots.

Thankfully, Igor Radivilov is both still alive and hit vault to sit in second. Miracle of miracles. We have escaped the foretold prophecy:

C. NCAA Gym actually sort of did something…?

Hopefully, this will start to provide some curbing of the fetus-verbal epidemic, though the language could be stronger. Don’t just ban the early visits; ban the early scholarship offers entirely.

If you’re not up on the NCAA lingo, an official visit is one paid for by the school and cannot happen until the senior year of high school. An unofficial visit is one paid for by the student(‘s parents) but that the athletic department knows about and is involved in, just isn’t technically paying for. Previously, there was no real limit on unofficial visits. This is a good start. Now let’s do more.

My worry is that this new rule isn’t strong enough to actually stop anything and will simply lead to more people making verbal commitments with even less awareness or information about the school in question than they have now. Before your junior year of high school, you have no idea what you want in a college or a gymnastics program and should be making no decisions on that front. (All the coaches know this, and all the parents know this, but they do it anyway because they know otherwise they’ll lose recruits/lose spots.) When I used to work in college admissions, we wouldn’t even respond to contact from parents whose children were in 9th grade or earlier because…like, go to a sleepover or something. Stop thinking about college.

The “late” signing period for NCAA also started last week, with news that Ariana Orrego (Peruvian international) is heading to Iowa State next season. Also, Laura Leigh Horton (Stars Houston) is graduating early and signing to join Arizona for 2018, and Jada Glenn has signed to start at Auburn next season.

D. NCAA Regionals/Nationals

This week, the NCAA announced all its postseason sites through 2022 (not a real year), so here’s the rundown of where everyone will be headed for their next entire lifetimes.

2018
Regionals
Alabama
Minnesota
NC State
Ohio State
Penn State
Utah
Nationals
St. Louis

2019
Regionals
Georgia
Iowa State
LSU
Michigan
Oklahoma
Oregon State
Nationals
Fort Worth

2020
Regionals
Auburn
Denver
Illinois
NC State
Penn State
UCLA
Nationals
Fort Worth

2021
Regionals
Alabama
Missouri
New Hampshire
Utah
Washington
West Virginia
Nationals
Fort Worth

2022
Regionals
Arkansas
Iowa
Kentucky
Michigan
NC State
Oregon State
Nationals
Fort Worth

E. NCAA Awards

Rounding up all the awards that have been handed out over the past week, Ashleigh Gnat took the AAI Award (best senior), Alex McMurtry won the Elite 90 Award (best gymnast that also goes to class), the gymnastics finalists for the Honda Award (best lady at lady sports) are Capps, Nichols, Gnat, and McMurtry, the LSUs won the coaches of the year awards, and 850 people are All-Americans of some description.

F. Kami Moore

Kami Moore (of Geddert’s and later Nebraska before medically retiring) made a video describing her horrifying experience with Larry Nassar. It’s a tough watch but very worth it. She’s incredibly brave and composed when talking about her experience and describes what was going through her head as a 13-year-old and what’s going through her head now as she’s fully understanding what happened to her.

G. GymCastic

This week’s episode is a full recap of NCAA Nationals with all of my experiences in the arena, including my favorite routines to see in person, my favorite team to watch train, coach interactions, the weirdest sound I’ve ever heard in my life, and shading all the crackiest scores. (I’m looking at you, floor.)

Give it a listen.

H. Beam routine of the week

Obvi.