Last night, at the most inconvenient possible time, Stanford announced that Kristen Smyth has “stepped down” as head coach. You know, like coaches totally normally do for perfectly normal reasons right before the school year is about to start. Nothing to see here…
She just happened to decide to step down.
I also love that they tried to bury the story on a Friday night like they think they’re in an episode of The West Wing. You’re college gymnastics, and the gymternet is seven days a week. Continue reading And None for Kristen Smyth, Bye→
Jake Dalton Toe Point™ has pointed its last toe. Pour out a comically large bicep. Or something. I don’t know how this works.
The bam-bam-grrr events tended to be his things, but I was always partial to parallel bars.
Year in and year out, Dalton made teams to compete the power events during an era in which he had plenty of competition for those spots. Vault/floor gymnasts like Legendre, Ruggeri, and more recently Whittenburg probably can’t count how many teams they didn’t make because their strengths overlapped too much with Dalton’s and Dalton was already a lock for the team. His execution and relative consistency allowed him to rise above the rest.
B. P&G Championship rosters
I was going to do a post about the women’s roster for nationals upon release, but it was boring so I didn’t.
The senior women’s field will be comprised of everyone who competed at Classic except Laney Madsen, who did not get her qualifying score. Victoria Nguyen is also slated to compete after pulling out of Classic with injury, and Sydney Johnson-Scharpf will appear at nationals after having her petition approved. (She was sick at Classic and also technically got the necessary qualifying score at Cracky-Scoring Iceland Meet. It just wasn’t a national team assignment and therefore didn’t count for her qualification needs.)
Several gymnasts also managed to achieve only two- or three-event qualifying scores at the classic meets, so while they were allowed to compete the AA at US Classic, they can compete only on those specific events at nationals. Here are the event scratches in spreadsheet format because of course I did.
On the junior side, the field is much smaller than it was at classic because of the somewhat harsh qualifying standard (only harsh in that scores from elite qualifiers cannot be used to qualify to nationals—the qualifying score must come from the ranch, an assignment, or a classic meet). It’s a necessary harshness, though, because otherwise the nationals field would just be too large. We still have 31 juniors making it in as is.
This is a place of honesty, so let’s be real. We’re coming up on one of the two weeks every year when you decide to start paying attention to men’s gymnastics again and suddenly have very strong opinions about it that are based on a whole lot.
It’s a gymternet tradition.
So, to get you up to speed after 12 months of not watching very much of the boys doing all the strongies and the flippies or whatever they do, here’s a little primer. We’ll all just pretend I’m not in the exact same situation as you. Suspension of disbelief!
Here’s the most important thing to know: Moldauer/Modi is the new Shawn/Nastia. Everyone will need to pick a favorite right this minute and then make a screen name about it and have internet fights.
Yul Moldauer has developed into a fairly obsession-worthy character because of execution. Be fully prepared for Moldauer to show up with a D-Score total that is not only well behind Modi’s but that gives away a solid 2 points to the best AAers in the world. Moldauer is nonetheless the tentative favorite to become national champion next weekend because he can make up difficulty gaps through execution and is a plausible bet to hit a 9.0 E, even on non-vault events.
On rings, for instance, Moldauer has managed to defy the odds and become quite the competitive scorer despite not looking like Bebop and Rocksteady, because he’s just so precise.
This shouldn’t necessarily be constructed as purely a battle of execution versus difficulty, however, because it’s not like Akash Modi is some D-chucking garbage monster. Still, Modi’s best opportunities to cultivate an advantage on Moldauer will come because of D and will come on the events where he begins with a significant advantage, like pommel horse.
In 2016, the split jump 1/2 and straddle jump 1/2 on beam both had B value.
Oh, what simple times those were.
Carefree almost.
For 2017, both the split jump 1/2 and straddle jump 1/2 have been revalued and bumped up to C elements.
At the same time, the one-tenth difficulty bonus for leaps beginning and ending in side position has been expanded to include those leaps with just a 1/2 twist.
Add it all up, and what does that spell?
It spells that the split jump 1/2 from side position and straddle jump 1/2 from side position, elements that 9 months ago would have been B skills, are now D skills.
