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.
For this week, we have all the 10s and 9.975s, and then some handpicked 9.950s for which video was available to round out the poll.
1. Kirah Koshinksi (West Virginia) – Vault
2. Kyla Ross (UCLA) – Bars
3. Ashley Potts (Northern Illinois) – Bars
4. Maggie Nichols (Oklahoma) – Beam
5. Peng Peng Lee (UCLA) – Beam
6. Laura Mitchell (Bowling Green) – Beam
7. Katelyn Ohashi (UCLA) – Floor
8. Nia Dennis (UCLA) – Floor
9. Toni-Ann Williams (Cal) – Floor
10. Rachel Stypinski (Kent State) – Floor
11. Cami Drouin-Allaire (George Washington) – Floor
LINK (1:12:04)
For all the talk of SEC scoring, there’s not a single SEC routine this week.
Did not see Snead’s win coming last week. Went with Koshinski this week because she’s on all three of my fantasygym teams and GIRL IS KILLING IT. So underrated.
Snead’s 10 last week was deserved. She doesn’t have crazy difficulty, but her gymnastics is beautiful.
Went with Toni-Ann. Fabulous lights-out routine! Was also tempted by Stypinski’s routine.
Had to give Ross love for that bar routine that deserved a 10.
Think it’s Ohashis time she has been killing that floor routine. Tumbling, dance(elements), and performance are all top notch.
Out of curiosity, which team started the stuck landing celebration accessory? It’s everywhere! Did it start this year? I first saw it with LSU, then everyone was doing it.
LSU. They stole the idea from the Miami football team. Miami has a “turnover chain” that a player would get for getting a turnover. Jay Clark saw it (the chain was everywhere in the media during the football season) and threw out the idea to the team. It stuck and Gnat went out and got the crown.
Toni Ann was pretty good but no where near that score – low first landing, not controlled second landing and tush wiggling through out the rest – compared to the other floors in the poll I would put it between 9.850 and 9.9 but WAY off 9.975
What do y’all think about Felicia Hano and Katelyn Ohashi’s tumbling? Between those two, I think about half of their landings they jump out of. In my opinion, that’s why they score so high week in and week out. You can’t take a landing deduction if the gymnast can immediately leap out of the landing. It’s smart routine composition, I guess, though it feels like exploiting a loophole.
I agree. It’s being used more and more, especially by the top teams.
It reminds me of 2011-2012 for elites, when everyone started doing split jumps and stag leaps out of their landings because it gave them extra tenths in both difficulty and execution, even though half of them looked a little out of control. For Felicia and Gracie (the last pass for Gracie) they look like they’re barely containing it, and almost doesn’t fit, but Katelyn has so much panache and exubarence that it looks seamless with the choreography and flavor of the routine. From what I’ve seen LSU is really the only top team that doesn’t use it at all, the other top teams use it to a degree and UCLA is starting to incorporate it in a lot of their routine.
The OU gymnasts are doing it quite excessively as well. I think they should limit it to connecting out of one and dancing out of one skill. Most gymasts have a least one pass that they try to land “traditionally”, and I think that’s fine.
For me personally it annoys me more when the tumbling and the choreo are clearly separated, so I don’t mind dancing out of it as long as it fits the choreo!
I have mixed feelings about it, but I look at someone like Brenna Dowell as an example that shows that the leap doesn’t always cover up a bad landing, as she can only add the stag leap to her double front when it is bang on. I also feel like leaps are less necessary to cover up landings in NCAA where you are allowed the controlled step compared to elite where the absolute stick is required.
This is a trend to watch, for sure, but I disagree with you that leaps eliminate deductions, per se. Remember Bridgey Caquatto and how she could NEVER control that split jump out of her last pass? Kennedy Baker has also leapt out of her last pass and tended to travel backwards because of too much power. A leap that isn’t controlled well out of a tumbling pass will get dinged (unless Carol’s involved). Ohashi seems to be more consistent with her leaps than most, and hers actually add to her routine and are memorable, which I like. I don’t think she should be getting 10s for that routine though. It’s not the cleanest DLO I’ve ever seen – there’s some knee bend and legs aren’t perfectly together.
Leaps don’t eliminate deductions, especially if they’re super out of control, or if you are unable to hit the split position, but it does greatly decrease your chance of having one. If you’ve overrotated a lot, you’re going to fly out of bounds no matter what, and if you’re really short, then nothings going to save you from sitting down. But what may be a slightly large lunge, slight underrotation or obvious step turns into a “perfect” landing.
I’d definitely be in favor of a rule that requires 1 tumbling pass to be finished with a salto landed cleanly. Maybe 2. But not 3.
Laura Mitchell (Bowling Green) gets my vote for that beam mount! Love it!