Polls

Best Routine of Week 4 Poll

34 Comments

Your instructions
1. Vote for the best routine
2. Don’t get upset when this inevitably devolves into a twitter popularity contest. It’s not that important.

Criteria
1. Only routines scoring 9.950+ will be included in the poll
2. There must be video available of that routine so that the voters can, you know, watch it.
3. Each gymnast may appear only once per week. The higher score (or my discretion in the event of a tie) is used.

1st 2nd 3rd
Week 1 Price (STAN) – UB Lee (UCLA) – UB Finnegan (LSU) – UB
Week 2 Crouse (NEB) – VT Price (STAN) – VT Gowey (FL) – BB
Week 3 Glenn (UCLA) – BB Ramler (MIN) – BB Hambrick (LSU) – FX

We had 27 scores of 9.950+ in week 4, which is too many to include in a manageable poll (I’m not having a rage stroke, you’re having a rage stroke…), so this week’s poll includes only the available 9.975s and 10s.

1. Maggie Nichols (Oklahoma) – Vault

2. Elizabeth Price (Stanford) – Bars

3. Peng Peng Lee (UCLA) – Beam

4. Alex McMurtry (Florida) – Beam

5. Alyssa Baumann (Florida) – Beam

6. Sophia Carter (Arkansas) – Beam

7. Kyla Ross (UCLA) – Beam

FLO Link

Or, Deanna has you covered with the important parts at 0:29

8. Kennedy Baker (Florida) – Floor

9. Myia Hambrick (LSU) – Floor

FLO Link

10. Toni-Ann Williams (Cal) – Floor

34 thoughts on “Best Routine of Week 4 Poll”

  1. I don’t want to vote for any Florida/Oklahoma gymnasts this week since their scores were so ridiculous. I went with Tori-Ann…

    1. Ha, I had the same thought. Although Maggie’s vault was beautiful!

      I went with Sophia Carter.

    2. Wonderful DLO, and I love the way she moves. I voted for her too. The crackfest scores were ridiculous!

  2. I really do love Peng Peng, but I HATE her beam choreo. I wish I could like it, but I just can’t…

    1. I liked it 5 years ago but getting a little sick of it. It is good but face it it’s the same It doesn’t change. She is lovely to watch but really needs an overhaul. Yawn

      1. Yeah, she gets so much height on that 2.5 that I want to see her throw a triple twist.

  4. I was tempted to vote for Kyla, not for her Beam, but for how good her all-around performance was, but decided to vote on what I thought was the best single routine of the week. Which was Peng.

  5. Peng! The ROAR of the neutral-site crowd at seeing Peng-Peng Lee’s Homma Flairs beam mount was incredible!

    Here’s the original: Leah Homma (another Canadian Bruin)

  6. I couldn’t decide between Peng and Ebee, these where the two that stood out most to me. Peng’s routine is just beautiful and light und flowy and expressive while Ebee gets me with being so crisp and powerfully controlled. Was surprised to see she had comparatively few votes in her favor.

    1. Didn’t see Mya Hambrick’s routine here in the comments until after I posted. She definitely rounds out the top three for me.

  8. “Don’t get upset when this inevitably devolves into a twitter popularity contest. It’s not that important.”
    Yeah, that was me last year… whoops.

  9. It was hard to decide, but Peng’s flares always push it over the edge when I’m in that spot! Probably my single favorite skill in gymnastics!

    Also, I’m impressed that UCLA leo stayed on. #nomorebacklessleos2018

  10. I hope nobody votes for Peng, because that 10 is as egregious as the OU/Florida scoring. She stepped out of her flight series and had to kick her leg out to maintain balance after her double turn. A 10? Please.

    1. Well, I’m no judge, but the leg thing doesn’t look like a balance check to me, and the step out of the flight series is nowhere NEAR as egregious as the minor errors that are constantly ignored on behalf of Nichols, Skinner, McMurtry etc. (I’d also put Peng, Ross etc. in that group of chronically overscored gymnasts, but not for this one).
      I was personally more dismayed by Hambrick’s extreme pike in her “DLO,” and don’t get why no one seems to mind that… but everyone has their thing that bugs them.

      1. That pike drives me crazy! I love her routine and her landings out of her passes are unbelievable but I can’t get over the pike.

    2. Wow, those are both extremely nitpicky examples. Extending the leg forward at the end of a double turn is NOT a balance break. You can see her shoulders/upper body perfectly in line while her leg is raised. It’s a stylistic movement, not something she does because she’s off on the skill. I can see how the step after the series was likely an error, but she disguised it beautifully. I don’t think it looks like anything more than a controlled step immediately into dance.

      I love Peng, and I will miss her unique, difficult routines on UB and BB. You can find tiny micro-deductions in every routine, but I would give this beam set a 10 all day long.

      1. Peng’s leg is NOT extended forward after her double turn, it is extended to the SIDE–and even if it were forward, there IS NO REASON for a double turn in passe to finish with the leg UP other than loss of balance. The fact that her upper body does not look particularly tense or unbalanced does not mean that she is not fighting for equilibrium; she certainly does not do that ‘extension’ normally in her regular choreography. If this were ballet, if the movement were controlled, and if the ‘extension’ were sustained, you might have a point, but you are completely wrong here.

      2. Judges on crack are a common occurrence, as you should know just from the OU-FL meet, and hardly normalize silly scoring just by perpetrating it. Peng’s leg movement is not ambiguous and not debatable–nor are her steps back after her series. It doesn’t matter how graceful the coverup is; the error still happened. This sort of ’10’ is exactly like the horrible rash of ‘imperfect 10s’ after the 84 Olympics, when, as Comaneci said, ‘everyone who did something and didn’t fall got a 10.’

      3. “Peng’s leg movement is not ambiguous and not debatable.”

        This comment just shows that you are narrow-minded, closed off from the realities of NCAA judging, and likely biased when it comes to this particular routine at this particular meet. I won’t engage you further.

      4. “Danny”–And your comments all show that you are ignorant, ill-educated about gymnastics, noisily partisan, and overtly biased towards Peng no matter what actual facts may be. You never ‘engaged’ me; you bored me and annoyed me with your biased denials and defenses of obvious crack scoring. Bye, Felicia!

    3. You got THAT right, Anonymous–I was wondering if I was the ONLY person who noticed two errors in Peng’s routine. It’s lovely otherwise, but nowhere near a 10 particularly with that kick after the turn. Peng is so graceful that she makes it look okay, but. No.

      1. I don’t know what to tell you. You don’t get to guess when someone is or isn’t off balance. Just because a movement isn’t necessary, doesn’t mean it’s .05 off. If you watch Peng’s routines from Ohio State and Arizona, she does the same thing with her leg. For her, it is an ending position, and unless there is something else in her movement that signifies that she’s off balance, I don’t think it warrants .05 off, and I don’t think many judges would take a deduction for that, especially in NCAA.

      2. No, she does not do the same thing with her leg (if it were the same thing every time, it might be considered ‘choreography’ although it would OBVIOUSLY be a built-in balance correction even then, just like all the tedious ‘dancing’ out of difficult floor passes and wolf turns on floor, LOL!) in all her routines–the position is never the same twice. There is no ‘guessing’ about it; double turns are hard and rarely ever finished in perfect balance, which is one of the big reasons they are rare in competition. Hell, most people do bad single turns, including in elite! Peng is admirable and does a lovely beam routine with far more difficulty than most NCAA gymnasts, but you don’t get to call her imperfections ‘perfect’ just because you’re infatuated. LOL.

      3. So, that’s great. You would deduct for it, which is fine. I wouldn’t, and it seems that judges this season have not been taking it either. I think when the movement is ambiguous, the benefit of the doubt should go to the gymnast, which it looks like it has in Peng’s case.

      4. So I’m the original Anonymous person who started the whole Peng discussion. (Should have used an alias to refer back to). I think Peng is a lovely gymnast. Excellent difficulty and execution. I’ve seen 10s from her in the past (bars and beam) and some of those seem completely warranted. I just think in this case her routine wasn’t as good as others she’s done, so I can’t give it the 10 that the judges did.

        With regard to her leg up after the double turn, I view that as a balance correction. She sticks her leg way out on the side of the beam to correct an imbalance on the other side. Not egregious, not a bad save, but it’s a save nonetheless. I stand by my original score of 9.925 for this well-done routine.

    4. Hi, original Anonymous who started Peng discussion (lol)–It’s really hilarious, in a pathetic sort of way, that all of us criticizing a perfect score for an imperfect routine have felt the need to assure everyone of what a great gymnast Peng is and how much we love her routines. Perhaps that’s because of hysterical partisan commenters who accuse us of ‘bias’ for daring to point out any flaw whatsoever? Peng is obviously wonderful and I have seen her do a perfect beam routine without the leg kick balance correction after the double turn–or the small steps after the series. The fact that this particular routine, though excellent, had minor mistakes hardly besmirches her reputation. *SMDH*

  11. Agreed. Peng’s routine was still a thing of beauty, but not a 10 (I would score it 9.925). Same with McMurtry’s vault (I would score it 9.95). Lovely vault, huge height, but not a 10.

    I think my vote is Maggie’s vault. I watched this meet live and I was certain it would get a matching 10, and I was shocked when it didn’t. Basically, if I was in Super Six and had to pick one of these routines as my anchor routine to win the championship, I’d pick that vault from Maggie.

  12. I wonder, was it hard for you to choose between McMurtry’s VT and BB? I adore her vault, but there was a distinct slide back on landing that vault, and your criticisms of her beam form the other day really ring true with me, too. I guess i would have gone with BB, too, because for me they are more subjective form issues.

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