1. Florida Gators
Score: 197.500
Florida edged Oklahoma to take the top spot in the season’s first rankings, largely on the strength of a beam rotation that picked up right where it left off last season. Overall, Florida recorded ten scores in the 9.9s, compared to Oklahoma’s five. Ellie Lazzari made an encouraging debut with two scores in the 9.9s, and Trinity Thomas leads the national all-around standings with her opening 39.750.
2. Oklahoma Sooners
Score: 197.450
Oklahoma came up just shy of Florida but showed a complete and even first-meet performance with no counting score lower than 9.825. Freshman Katherine Levasseur led the entire team on bars with a 9.925, and Audrey Lynn—who never scored better than 9.650 on vault as a L10—upgraded to a handspring pike 1/2 to tie for the highest vault score with 9.875. Despite the second-place position, this week’s score is .150 higher than Oklahoma’s debut score from last season, which had the team in first place.
3. Utah Utes
Score: 196.900
Utah will comfortably accept a near-197 performance in the first meet, a showing that encountered a few minor bugs but also featured competitive debuts from Rucker and Stanhope, on vault and floor—though with downgraded vaults, so watch that space. Unsurprisingly, beam shone as Utah’s strongest event score, even with some shaky early-lineup routines.
4. Alabama Crimson Tide
Score: 196.850
Alabama will be among the teams most pleased with its first-meet performance, securely withstanding falls here and there to score competitively, and keeping pace on floor even with a half-missing lineup. Sophomore Mati Waligora stole the show in her debut with a Y1.5 and a 9.925 on beam, though Shania Adams also comported herself smoothly in an all-around debut, and Makarri Doggette was excellent in her two appearances. A rough performance from Emily Gaskins may jeopardize her lineup spots as more gymnasts add back events, so keep an eye on that.
5. LSU Tigers
Score: 196.550
LSU isn’t ranked poorly but won’t be particularly pleased with a first-meet performance that nearly saw the team fall to Arkansas. Shaky beam routines from some unexpected characters, as well as a generally rough day for Shchennikova, took LSU’s total down, and the team required some serious saving from Haleigh Bryant and Kiya Johnson on floor to get the win (their scores were too high, but even scored normally, those routines would have been enough for the win). The sublime three-event debut from Bryant will rank as the major highlight for LSU.
6. Arkansas Razorbacks
Score: 196.350
In challenging LSU most of the way—and winning the meet on bars and beam—Arkansas exceeded expectations in its opening performance and is rewarded with a top-4 SEC ranking in the first week. Kennedy Hambrick ranks as a top-5 all-arounder after her showing, and Sarah Shaffer even got an actual 9.9 for her perfect Yurchenko 1/2. The team will, however, have to address the early vault and floor scores if it is to return to the 196.8 level that it reached in the second meet last season.
7. Georgia Bulldogs
Score: 196.150
When Georgia hit this mark to win the first meet of the season, it seemed a reasonable score, but as other teams passed it up, Georgia fell into the bottom half of the SEC teams. Tentative beam, early season vault landings, and a lack of Rachael Lukacs kept the squad from exploding for a statement result, but there were a number of individual highlights like the wildly successful AA debut of Victoria Nguyen, and a stuck Y1.5 from Mikayla Magee as she showed the best routine in all three of her lineups (fight me). In fact, Georgia had a…strong team score…on bars. This is a breaking news accomplishment.
8. Kentucky Wildcats
Score: 195.825
Kentucky had a good thing going through three rotations, with a largely untested team (disturbingly absent one Ella Warren) staying with Alabama and trucking toward mid- or high-196 pace. Beam turned to mush in the final rotation leaving Kentucky down in the 195s for an unusable score, but the team did emerge from this meet with more realistic routine options than there appeared to be going in—and with Josie Angeny ranked as the #3 AAer in the country.
9. Auburn Tigers
Score: 195.725
A couple lineup limitations caught up with Auburn as the meet wore on, and what looked like a respectable, if slightly rusty, first meet 196 fell from the team’s grasp after counting an error on floor. Derrian Gobourne looked ready, clearly the class of the team on vault, bars, and floor, and freshman Gabby McLaughlin made her debut by tying for the team lead on beam. Some likely-seeming freshman floor contributors did not appear, so keep an eye on how that lineup develops in future meets.
10. BYU Cougars
Score: 195.700
Current-era BYU won’t be that interested in a sub-196 score, but the team showed a characteristically extensive roster of meet-ready contributors in a performance marred only by a wobble-a-thon on beam that led to a bunch of counting 9.6s and 9.7s. The security of the floor tumbling was an obvious plus, getting BYU into the top 5 in the national floor rankings for the first week.
11. Arizona State Sun Devils
Score: 194.725
Arizona State was exceeding expectations through the first half of the competition against Oklahoma with a vault lineup that looked more competitive than it did during the season preview—helped by the addition of Anaya Smith. Things fell apart in the second half with a counting fall on beam and a floor lineup that got stuck in the 9.6s and needs more time. Additional encouraging freshman performances came from Sarah Clark and Emily White with 9.850s on bars.
12. Utah State Aggies
Score: 194.350
Utah State originally finished with a 194.100, but a later score adjustment lifted the Aggies out of the first-week basement and into 12th place. This was not the performance of the later stages of last season—a number of the routines looked to be in preseason larval stages—but the team can also expect a full-point improvement on this opening mark in future meets solely from a less fallsy beam rotation.
13. Southern Utah Thunderbirds
Score: 194.325
Southern Utah suffered the worst of the beam problems among the first-week teams, having to endure a three-fall rotation that dashed any hopes of a competitive first-week total, despite an event winning 9.900 from Mayson Bentley on bars that led SUU to a competitive result there.
14. Missouri Tigers
Average: 194.250
Quite surprisingly, Missouri is forced to be the caboose of the first-week rankings. Without Helen Hu, Kyra Burns, Alisa Sheremeta, and Kambrie Brandt, there was always going to be a depth issue as the team had to rustle up all possible borderline routines—and even then was able to compete just five on vault and floor. Add in a counting beam fall and no vault scores higher than 9.700, and it was never going to be a high score. Missouri desperately needs to get some people back.
My thoughts:
Florida – great job from Trinity and Nya. Surprised they didn’t give the AA chance to either Richards or Lazzari. And hoping we will see Foberg this year. These lineups will be so different next season so hoping everyone gets lots of chances this year.
Oklahoma – Amazing depth that they can score so high without Trautman and an off day for Ragan. Stash with the stunning switch-switch on beam reminds me of Grace Glenn. Hope to see LeVasseur on beam and floor (such hard lineups to make) along with the new freshmen Quinn Smith, Fehring, and Fletcher chipping in.
Utah – really not much to say. Beam is still amazing, floor got some needed power, hoping the same willl happen on vault.
Alabama – a lot better than I thought. Concerned about Blanco and Gaskins (and Olsen a bit too) but Adams + Dogette + Waligora + Graber is a really solid core 4.
Kentucky – Wow! for Angeny. Could be top 10 AAer this year. Also concerned about Warren but really impressed that a new roster could do so well (Worley was the only one who had EVER competed floor before!) UCLA should be taking notes.
Georgia, LSU – I’ll give them another week to make an impression.
LSU was messy bit their statements was that they have restocked big skills/routines more than 2020 which was injury riddled. Everyone now needs to improve/settle in.
Georgia’s big impression is that they actually fielded a full team- no hail mary of a routine in any linejp. If hawthorn gets back on VT, Finnegan gets in bars, and Lukacs goes in on VT and Fx, this will be a ckmpetive team I. The 6-12 tier. 4 10.0 sv vaults, an entire bar lineup and 5 e or d combo passes on floor.
One I did not see but seems to be building per meet notes & scores is BYU. Hopefully I’ll catch one of their broadcasts.
Excuse the e cessive typos-I am having a losing fight with my phone.
Florida: would love to see Skaggs and Schoenherr on beam/floor and floor instead of Clapper. With all due respect to Leah, I don’t understand her in the lineups. She only had high beam scores last year because she went last.
Oklahoma: I love Trautman and want her healthy!
Bama: Gaskins has never lived up to her potential, sadly. Doggette is another one I would love to see healthy, because her vault is phenomenal! Shallot had to quarantine after arriving in the US, so she I’ll be back to her usual self.
Kentucky: so impressed with Angeny! She has come a long way since freshman year.
I thought, as a rare occasion, the home scoring at Oklahoma was actually restrained enough to compare to the other meets. Their beam rotation was just as strong as Florida’s despite the lower total, and Audrey Davis is gorgeous on the event. Floor could really use the return of Trautman.
Florida looks to be rightly picked as preseason #1, and at their peak, they should be the same scoring potential as last season. Oklahoma could be a couple tenths off just based on losing Nichols’ 9.95-10 potential on every event every event. Smith and Webb are looking to keep their own scores which were already 9.9+, not replacing Nichols, and same with Trautman whenever she returns. So one of the new routines in each event will need to get to 9.95.
I think OU’s beam was much weaker than florida’s but should be stronger without the wobbles. I am concerned about floor because it was fairly weak, and in real life LaPinta would have gotten a 9.700 instead of a 9.900. Bars is also weaker, as Draper is most likely not their ideal routine, and LeVasseur had quite a few handstand issues that really shouldn’t have gotten a 9.925. But i’m sure when the other freshman come in some of those worry-spots will disappear.
The scoring was normal, and I actually found it a very enjoyable meet to watch except for Kelly Garrison and the fact that I had to watch it off of Natalie Brown’s Instagram Live. Anastasia Webb was a particular highlight for me.
Davis and Levasseur are beautiful! And that 9.85 from Draper on bars was head scratching. I’m hoping Fletcher will be a nice Mg Elite bars addition.
Exactly right on that LaPinta floor score, she took a HUGE hop sideways on her first pass. Other than that, the scoring was quite reasonable for the meet.
I thought that Utah took a bit of a hit on bars compared to the other teams in the meet but over all the scoring was mostly in line. I do think that some of Utah’s vaults at 9.775 and 9.80 compared with the 9.85 vaults with some of the SEC teams. I had Utah pegged at 197.2 but it’s the first meet.