A. Pan American Championships team

Following nationals, the US named its Pan-American Championships team as Grace McCallum, Shilese Jones, Kara Eaker, Trinity Thomas, and Jade Carey—going exactly by the all-around standings from nationals with the exception of the three worlds-lock gymnasts: Biles, Hurd, and McCusker.

It’s a quality, perfectly acceptable, well-balanced team (if a little light on bars with Shchennikova as only the alternate). I don’t, however, care for the approach of using the direct all-around standings to make a team. That’s not typically going to bring out the highest-scoring group in a team competition or be the most efficient use of spots. Why even have a selection committee if they’re not going to do any selecting?

In this case, I think particularly of someone like Jordan Chiles. She’s actually in the conversation for worlds because of vault—but is also so erratic in her hitting that she remains a very questionable selection. Pan Ams could have provided more data points for a borderline candidate like her.

In true shallow USAG fashion (trying to solve problems only cosmetically without addressing the underlying frustrations), they’re attempting to eliminate perceptions of bias by making more selections via all-around results. Team formats being what they are, however, that approach doesn’t work.

The only way you can try to eliminate perceptions of political unfairness or bias against athletes in gymnastics selection is by publicly, transparently, and logically explaining your decisions so that we can judge for ourselves whether those reasons make sense, or whether you’re just a biased garbage factory. What you can’t do is announce a list of names and then disappear in a cloud of smoke.

This issue is coming up intensely on the men’s side right now with John Orozco’s anger about Donnell Whittenburg being left of the team. Someone is always going to be upset and think team selections are unfair—that’s part of the job of naming teams, someone’s going to be pissed and the coaches and athletes will always semi-hate you—but you have to be open about the reasoning in choosing the people you did. Otherwise, you’re going to invite assumptions of bias.

Why wouldn’t the athletes assume something fishy is going on if they’re never given good reasons as to why decisions are made?

I personally would not have placed Whittenburg in the worlds selection group of 8 because he’s not far enough along yet and isn’t even showing basic routines on some of his most important events. I would, however, have put him on the national team because he could be worthy of a place on a future worlds team at full strength.

Also, if Whittenburg wasn’t going to be named to anything at all after showing up at nationals with semi-meh performances on rings and PBars, regardless of the reasoning, he should have been told in advance of the competition that there was no point in doing what he was doing.

Expectations need to be made clear to every athlete. National team coordinators should be sitting down with every athlete and saying, “This is where I see you fitting (or not fitting). This is what you need to do to keep that up. This is what you need to do to change your position. I need to see this many competitive routines. I need to see you getting healthy.” Or whatever it may be. Your place in national team setups or in the eyes of the selection committee should never be a mystery.

B. The Jade Carey situation

I get into this in the update to the 2020 Olympic qualification explanation, but…

Rumblings from nationals were that Jade Carey is not putting herself in the mix for worlds this year in an effort to gain a nominative Olympic spot through event world cups instead. This needs to be false. That would be an extremely stupid decision for the US program to make. Do not do that. You do not want that. Send Jade Carey to worlds. Do not send any athletes to event world cups. Those spots do not make sense for the US women. You do not need to go for them. Repel that instinct.

One more thing to add: Some people are confused about the individual spots. Whether a spot is qualified through the apparatus route or the all-around routes has no bearing on how many events you can end up competing at the actual Olympics. Everyone has the option to compete four pieces, to compete one piece, whatever. It doesn’t matter how that spot was earned once you’re there. Continue reading Things Are Happening – August 22, 2018 →