| 2020 MISSOURI ROSTER |
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| Seniors | ||
| Mary Nicholson |
BB FX |
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| Morgan Porter (redshirt) |
VT UB BB FX |
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| Aspen Tucker |
VT UB BB FX |
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| Juniors | ||
| Chelsey Christensen |
VT UB FX |
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| Lauren Clevenger |
BB |
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| Gabrielle Gottula |
VT BB FX |
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| Sophomores | ||
| Hannah McCrary |
VT BB FX |
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| Alisa Sheremeta | UB BB FX |
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| Freshmen | ||
| Kambrie Brandt |
VT UB FX |
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| Helen Hu |
VT UB BB FX |
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| Adalayna Hufeindiek |
|
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| Grace Kaiding |
|
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| Anna McGee |
UB |
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| Hollyn Patrick |
UB |
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| Sienna Schreiber |
VT UB BB FX |
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FINAL SEASON RANKING
2019 – 17th
2018 – 20th
2017 – 17th
2016 – 19th
2015 – 21st
2014 – 41st
2013 – 43rd
2012 – 20th
2011 – 32nd
2010 – 12th
THE 2019 STORY
Missouri finished the 2019 regular season at 19th, and with its strong regional semifinal score of 196.625, moved up two spots to end the year as the top-ranked team that didn’t advance to the regional final. That equaled the best result of the Shannon Welker era—and the best result since that upset journey to nationals a decade ago.
DEPARTED 2019 ROUTINES
Britney Ward – VT, BB
Allison Bower – BB, FX
Madeleine Huber – VT, UB (FX)
Brooke Kelly – UB, BB
Becca Schugel – UB
Frances Bidwill – VT (UB)
Michaelee Turner – FX
Paige Kovesnky – VT, UB
It’s a new world for a Missouri team that lost 8 of 24 regionals routines (33%) from 2019—some to graduation, some to the usual Missouri whatever where everyone disappears from the roster every season. The routine loss is actually somewhat more severe than that 33% would suggest because Missouri has also lost routines like the VT, UB from Huber and the VT from Ward that would have been in those final lineups in an ideal world.
INCOMING GYMNASTS
Since Missouri returns just seven athletes from last year’s team, the majority of the 2020 roster is brand new, featuring seven freshmen along with UIC transfer Alisa Sheremeta.
Helen Hu will be the star of the new class, a four-event contributor who should provide the best scores on bars and beam, but I’d pick Sheremeta to make a few lineups as well, Hollyn Patrick to provide a bars option, and Sienna Schreiber to be at early-lineup/usable-backup status on all four pieces. Kambrie Brandt will be a January addition providing a couple routines, with JO scores on vault that are too high to be ignored.
2020 PROJECTION
Typically I’m wary of optimistic projections for teams with this much lineup turnover, but when adding in Hu, Sheremeta, and the rest of the new routines, this team looks poised to improve its scoring potential in a couple key places.
Even though the 17th-place finish in 2019 ranks as one of Missouri’s better results, it wasn’t necessarily satifying or representative of a team that had truly reached its full potential. A finish in the healthier part of the teens is definitely within the realm of possibility for the 2020 squad.
VAULT
2019 Event Ranking: 22
| Lineup locks: Morgan Porter, Aspen Tucker, Helen Hu, Kambrie Brandt, Hannah McCrary |
| Lineup options: Gabrielle Gottula, Sienna Schreiber, Chelsey Christensen |
Vault proved a challenging event for Missouri late in the 2019 season as the injuries began to pile up, culminating in the team getting 9.6-ed and 9.7ed into submission at SECs. With that in mind, it was slightly troubling to see Missouri put up just four vaults at Sunday’s intrasquad. Still, it’s only the beginning of December, and this roster should have the tools to pump up the 10.0 starts and the vault quality compared to that end-of-season vault lineup.
In that intrasquad, Morgan Porter hit a competition-ready Y1.5 as the lineup anchor, which would be a massively influential upgrade. Kambrie Brandt won’t join the team until January, but she got 9.9s in JO and has shown a handspring pike 1/2 that the team would love to put in a lineup, and if Hannah McCrary can put together a full healthy season in 2020, there’s hope her 1.5 can also deliver the big numbers.
Helen Hu and Aspen Tucker bring the strongest fulls on the roster and should make the lineup, and then you’re left filling out a lineup with a Belle Gottula, who vaulted all of last season, or freshman Sienna Schreiber who has a perfectly viable full of her own. There’s certainly not a huge surplus of vaults—the lineup would be on fumes again if there’s another spate on injuries and needs those 10.0s to come through—but that’s 7 vaults that should be more 49.2 and less 49.0-49.1 than the team was last season.
BARS
2019 Event Ranking: 26
| Lineup locks: Helen Hu, Morgan Porter |
| Lineup options: Alisa Sheremeta, Hollyn Patrick, Chelsey Christensen, Aspen Tucker, Sienna Schreiber, Kambrie Brandt |
This was a more talented bars lineup last season than the scores would suggest, but it never really ended up getting out of the 9.775-9.825 friend zone. Missouri will hope that the addition of Helen Hu changes that as she is a 9.9-capable bars worker who will deliver the best routine in the lineup. The only issue may be selecting which skills to include in her routine to maximize the score and get those essential 9.9s. Right now, she’s doing Church + Pak and a Shap 1/2 and a toe full connected into her double tuck, which is way more bonus than necessary.
Missouri will have Morgan Porter on bars as well, but that’s as far as I’m comfortable going with lineup locks at this point because there’s still the chance that the rest of the lineup gets stuck in the 9.7s. We’ll need to see who the best options end up being to avoid that. Expect Sheremeta to see time with her 1.5-twist dismount, and new one Hollyn Patrick has some nice extension on a Jaeger as part of the mission to reconstruct this lineup and keep pace with the lost routines from Schugel and Kelly. The main argument for Missouri’s actual improvement over last year’s bars numbers, however, will be Helen Hu’s routine.
It looks to me like Tucker and Christensen will fill out the lineup as they did last year, but once again here Schreiber will provide another option.
BEAM
2019 Event Ranking: 20
| Lineup locks: Helen Hu, Gabrielle Gottula, Alisa Sheremeta |
| Lineup options: Mary Nicholson, Morgan Porter, Sienna Schreiber, Hannah McCrary, Aspen Tucker, Lauren Clevenger |
Expect Missouri’s beam team to go through a lineup reinvention journey this season. The team has lost three essential postseason routines from last year, and Belle Gottula is really the only returning gymnast I feel totally confident putting back into the 2020 lineup.
Elsewhere, we’re going to see some new people. It’s not going out on a limb to presume Helen Hu will become the anchor this season, Alisa Sheremeta has the routine to make the six, and I’ll rank beam as Sienna Schreiber’s most likely event to get into the lineup and not just be a realistic backup routine. These new routines should account for Missouri being able to keep pace with last season’s beam scores despite losing so many routines.
Mary Nicholson recorded strong scores last year, so don’t be at all surprised if she makes it back in, though the surprise of the beam intrasquad for me was Hannah McCrary. We didn’t see her on beam at all last year, but she showed a competitive routine on par with the sets we saw from Nicholson and Porter.
Beam is the least comfortable event for the AAing seniors Morgan Porter and Aspen Tucker, so while they’ll provide options, it might be another season where they really have to prove themselves to get into the beam six. It’s not an automatic selection.
FLOOR
2019 Event Ranking: 16
| Lineup locks: Aspen Tucker, Morgan Porter, Helen Hu |
| Lineup options: Alisa Sheremeta, Mary Nicholson, Hannah McCrary, Kambrie Brandt, Gabrielle Gottula, Sienna Schreiber |
Floor ranked as Missouri’s best event in 2019, and while some of that can be chalked up to home scoring that just popped off in the final rotation (we saw that again at the intrasquad, which was pretty reasonably evaluated for three events), floor should once again be Missouri’s deepest event in 2020 with a number of realistic and conference-competitive routines.
Tucker and Porter are locks to return to the lineup, and Missouri will have a fairly plentiful selection of front 2/1s to choose from as Helen Hu, Mary Nicholson, and Alisa Sheremeta all open with that pass. We saw very little of Hannah McCrary on floor in 2019, but if she’s healthy this year, she has a lineup-ready routine. Kambrie Brandt also competed a DLO in JO that pings the radar, and that’s already seven names before getting to Gottula, who made the final lineup last year and scored comfortably into the 9.8s. Missouri should be the most comfortable with the options it has on floor and could actually afford not every potential routine coming to fruition, which is less the case on the other pieces.
While the lineup has lost a leadoff routine from Bower and 9.8 options from Turner and Huber, the pieces are there to improve on floor for 2020.
So…what *is* the deal with the steady Missouri turnover?
Here’s an article about the coaches creating and unhealthy environment and playing favorites, including turning a blind eye to Morgan Porter allegedly committing credit card fraud (WTF)
https://www.komu.com/news/target-8-missouri-gymnastics-posts-abnormally-high-departure-numbers/
I’m still really confused/angry about the teammate who was the victim being kicked off the team while Morgan Porter was able to stay on it.
Well, shit. I liked Helen after seeing her unique FX at the Nastia cup a few years ago and was looking forward to her being a star. Now after reading that article, I want her to get the hell out of there like, yesterday, because who needs that toxic training atmosphere when you are also trying to do school?
At the intersquad meet everyone seemed really supportive and had a wonderful team dynamic, didn’t seem toxic at all. The turnover this year was largely due to a big graduating senior class.
I would take that article with a HUGE grain of salt, pretty poor journalism. You have to keep in mind a lot of those gymnasts were coached or recruited by former head coach, Rob Drass, then suddenly in 2014 the head coach changed. So it would make sense that many of those gymnasts would clash with the program switch, hence the turnover that happened in the first two years Shannon was rebuilding the program.
I understand gymnasts are disappointed when cut from the team, but often times it’s not without reason. I’ve seen a lot gymnasts come through the Mizzou program who appeared to have great potential when they were recruited in JO, but they don’t live up to that talent by the time they get to college. If you aren’t capable of making any lineups, there are other gymnasts who deserve a scholarship. That’s just how it goes.
In regards to the Morgan Porter scandal, I do agree that situation was handled very poorly by the administration. There are still sides of the story that haven’t been revealed, but obviously the choice was to sweep it under the rug.