2022 Georgia Bulldogs

[wptb id=71756]

RANKING HISTORY
2021 – 18th
2020 – 12th
2019 – 8th
2018 – 7th
2017 – 11th
2016 – 6th
2015 – 9th
2014 – 5th
2013 – 6th
2012 – 11th

2021 IN REVIEW

Georgia’s 18th-place result in 2021 marked the team’s lowest finish since it joined NCAA competition in 1983. So there’s that. While Georgia did snatch three home wins in conference meets, including one over eventual conference champion Alabama, the regular season road results were less impressive, peaking at just 196.375 and keeping Georgia ranked 7th in the conference. Not helping: An untimely COVID withdrawal from the SEC Championship temporarily halting the season right before the elimination meets. 

But this is Georgia. An 18th-place finish to an 18th-place season isn’t going to cut it, no matter the circumstances.

DEPARTED ROUTINES

Marissa Oakley – UB, BB
Sterlyn Austin – FX

THE NEW ONES

Georgia brings in three new athletes this year, but there remains quite a bit of uncertainty over how much they’ll actually appear, a significant factor in determining the team’s competitiveness. At Saturday’s preview, only Riley Milbrandt performed as part of the backup lineup on bars, and we saw nothing from Sarah Cohen and Maeve Hahn.

Ideally, Sarah Cohen would bring a lineup-ready floor routine, featuring a comfortable full-in, as well as an option on bars and beam to boost the realistic depth there. Hahn, a one-time junior elite, hasn’t reached those same levels since the 2018 season, but theoretically she should be able to bring some beam and bars, which the roster needs right now. While none of the first years are expected to be WOW STARS, Georgia really does need to get something from them this season to reinforce what is a semi-small and semi-injured roster.

This week, Georgia also announced three new gymnasts for the 2023 season, in addition to the three who had already signed in November, signaling a recognition that the roster needs some real expansion beyond this year’s seniors, who will have to do much of the work (potentially contributing half the routines) in 2022. 

2022 PROJECTION

Regression.

While Georgia’s first look on Saturday had shining moments, it just wasn’t different enough from last season to expect some dramatic shift in results—save for the presence of Victoria Nguyen rolling around on one of those leg-injury scooters, which could signal a shift in the wrong direction. With Georgia’s current conference peers like Missouri bringing in an excellent first-year class and Auburn bringing in Suni Lee, there’s real concern that Georgia could get left in the dust. 

It has always been clear that Kupets will be allowed more wiggle room than other coaches would because she’s the greatest college gymnast of all time, but it’s also worth noting that Danna Durante got five seasons before the axe, and Kupets is now entering her fifth season with results that are clearly weaker than Durante’s. Is Georgia content to finish in the double digits and the bottom half of the conference again, or not? There needs to be a new and consistent sign of life this season, more than just a friendly home result here and there before a quiet exit.  

BY EVENT

VAULT

2021 Event Ranking: 11

Lineup locks: Megan Roberts, Soraya Hawthorne, Rachel Baumann, Abbey Ward
Lineup options: Mikayla Magee, Rachael Lukacs, Amanda Cashman, Haley De Jong, Nhyla Bryant

The most encouraging news for Georgia this season comes out of the vault lineup. This event should be consistently competitive with most of the teams in the conference and should easily remain the best rotation of the four. Megan Roberts returns with her Y1.5 that was the strongest on the team last year, and while Soraya Hawthorne did not show a vault at the first look, she did show beam and floor, and her Y1.5 will surely be called upon. In upgrade news, Rachel Baumann has added a Y1.5 this season that looks viable and that Georgia hopes can act as a tangible boost to this lineup. Abbey Ward’s Tsuk 1/1 has been a mainstay in the six for her first three years, and that should continue in her senior season.

In best-case-scenario news, you’d have Mikayla Magee in this lineup because her Y1.5 form is the best on the entire team, but she was able to vault her 1.5 only a couple times last season, and without a tremendous amount of consistency. It’s essential that Georgia get that vault into the lineup when it matters if the team is going to rack up the big vault scores. It remains to be seen whether the Rachael Lukacs DTY is coming back (she went with a 1.5 at the first look that was a little in-betweeny), but even if she’s going with a full, I probably want that in the lineup for its amplitude. Georgia should also have viable backup Yfull options from the likes of De Jong and Cashman, so this lineup looks to be on the right track, with the requisite number of 10.0 starts and enough competitive fulls to keep these scores in line with nationals-level teams.  

BARS

2021 Event Ranking: 21

Lineup locks: Megan Roberts, Haley De Jong
Lineup options: Victoria Nguyen, Katie Finnegan, Emily Schild, Abbey Ward, Amanda Cashman, Rachel Baumann, Loulie Hattaway, Sarah Cohen, Maeve Hahn, Riley Milbrandt

Greater concerns start to crop up on bars, where Georgia will no longer have Marissa Oakley and is potentially without Victoria Nguyen as well depending on what plays out with her injury. Those were two of Georgia’s best bars routines last season, leaving a pit in the current lineup that needs to be filled by…TBA.

Megan Roberts and Haley De Jong return as lineup locks with the best routines, ones that should be going over 9.800 every time with occasional 9.9s. Beyond them, the roster has plenty of options for routines and shouldn’t struggle to muster a six, the concern being whether there are gymnasts in that group who can get more than a 9.750 with any regularity. Interestingly, Abbey Ward has been a last-resort option for this event (she went twice last season for 9.5s), but her bars routine on Saturday was the best apart from Roberts and De Jong. Don’t be shocked if she gets into the lineup for realsies.

In the interest of consistency, I imagine we’ll see a lot of Katie Finnegan and Amanda Cashman. There are some formies in their routines, but you should get hits out of them (and Finnegan’s straddle Pak isn’t particularly visible from the side angle). In riskier choices, Rachel Baumann has a routine with technically few issues, but bars has always been the question mark for her, and there was that time she got an 8.0 last season. And then there’s Emily Schild. Talent, no question. Recruited to be a bars anchor. But dismounting is going to be an adventure for her at this point. Like Magee on vault, Georgia really does need to get a couple good bars routines from Schild at the counting meets. If Georgia had Roberts, De Jong, Nguyen, and Schild with a dismount, you can see the makings of a competitive lineup this year…but how likely is it?

BEAM

2021 Event Ranking: 24

Lineup locks: Rachel Baumann, Mikayla Magee, Haley De Jong
Lineup options: Soraya Hawthorne, Katie Finnegan, Emily Schild, Nhyla Bryant, Victoria Nguyen, Alyssa Perez-Lugones, Megan Roberts, Rachael Lukacs, Maeve Hahn, Sarah Cohen

Concerns on beam for Georgia this season are more about depth than talent level because there are some quite excellent beamers on this team. Baumann, Magee, and De Jong all have 9.9-level work (when Magee doesn’t get a 9.9, it’s the lineup order’s fault), and they can drive up the scores to a pretty competitive place as long as they have some supplemental hits to join them in the lineup. That’s where the questions lie. 

It’s imperative that Georgia have an actual working beam routine for Soraya Hawthorne this season because her talent deserves far more than going 3 times a year for 9.775s. I do like the choice to give her a combination of two standing switch jumps this year because that’s her best element. Keep going to that well. Katie Finnegan competed a few times last season for usable scores each time and will likely be called upon again, and as on bars, Georgia will aim to get Emily Schild in there as much as possible.

At the first look, Georgia showed just six beam routines and a no-dismount exhibition from Schild, the sixth routine coming from Nhyla Bryant, who fell three times but showed such presence and leaps that it made everyone say, “Get in the lineup, I don’t even care.” It probably won’t happen, but also I want it to, and also it might need to because no one else showed a full routine and we’re less than a month away.

FLOOR

2021 Event Ranking: 21

Lineup locks: Rachel Baumann, Soraya Hawthorne, Megan Roberts, Alyssa Perez-Lugones
Lineup options: Mikayla Magee, Amanda Cashman, Haley De Jong, Rachael Lukacs, Nhyla Bryant, Sarah Cohen

Georgia’s floor presents a somewhat similar scenario to beam in that there should be enough routines to get by (in this case with pretty much the exact same lineup as last season), but maybe only just. Rachel Baumann, Soraya Hawthorne, and Megan Roberts put up big numbers throughout last season and will return to the lineup, expected to be the top scorers once again. We did not see any of Alyssa Perez-Lugones in the first look, but her consistent 9.8+s last season should also earn her a returning spot in the six. 

Much like on vault, the ideal lineup will include Mikayla Magee, who at her best has a piked full-in that will score very well, but over her first three seasons, she’s never been able to go more than occasionally on floor so will have to be managed to make sure she’s available at the right time. Haley De Jong and Amanda Cashman should present options again, and Nhyla Bryant may find her most likely lineup spot coming on floor, where her leaps are out of this world.

It’s a fine group, but we’re largely talking about the same lineup as last season, one that finished 21st on floor and peaked out at 49.350 in January. In the quest to inject something more, Georgia would like to lean on Sarah Cohen perhaps, or if Rachael Lukacs can go, that could be the game changer this lineup needs. It wasn’t long ago that Lukacs was one of the team’s most important floor workers, getting regular 9.925s, but she did just two FXs last season. It would be a real boon for Georgia if Lukacs could get back to 2020 level this year.   

2022 Minnesota Gophers

[wptb id=71861]

RANKING HISTORY
2021 – 8th
2020 – 10th
2019 – 13th
2018 – 22nd
2017 – 30th
2016 – 12th
2015 – 23rd
2014 – 14th
2013 – 8th
2012 – 24th

2021 IN REVIEW

The 2021 season tied for the best finish in Minnesota’s program history. So…that’s pretty good, right? It was a win? The 2021 squad recorded 3 of the team’s 5 best scores all-time—including a record 197.750 to win the Big Ten Championship—and found itself ranked as high as 4th for a split second. There’s basically no way to construct Minnesota’s 2021 as anything other than a triumph.

DEPARTED ROUTINES

Mary Korlin-Downs – BB
Lexi Montgomery – UB, BB

THE NEW ONES

Minnesota adds five gymnasts for this season, a couple of whom can make multiple lineups and increase the overall competition for spots compared to last season. Haley Tyson has the potential to be yet another under-the-radar Minnesota ninja L10 who brings a form-pleasing Yurchenko 1.5, a potentially gigantic bars routine, and at least a possibility—if not a lineup lock—on beam and floor. With a little bit of refining, the sky’s the Mable for her.

Marissa Jencks could find her way into the vault lineup as she, too, has been working a Y1.5. That’s why I’d classify vault as her most likely event, though she has the content to be sniffing around the borders of any lineup in that 1st-2nd up, 1st-2nd backup territory.

Brestyan’s gymnast Lauren Pearl, whom you may recall from an elite stint in 2018, presents an interesting case because theoretically she should provide the Brestyan’s usual: huge amplitude, big acrobatic difficulty, and a break-the-beam beam routine. But, she has barely competed since 2018. So the possibility for her is three-event lineup contribution, but the reality is…we’ll see.

On the opposite end of the apparatus spectrum, Olivia Reed is a bars/beam specialist with a particularly beautiful Jaeger that could make a very good case for the bars lineup.

2022 PROJECTION

Even.

Minnesota will remain easy to underestimate in 2022, but there’s no reason to think the team will lose any quality from last year’s top-10 squad. If Ramler and Loper weren’t returning for fifth years, then we would be having a very different conversation right now, but seeing as they are, these lineups are going to be very strong. Only a couple final-lineup beam routines are gone, which may provoke some questions on that event, but those questions should be more than made up for by the injection of new routines on several of the other apparatuses.

Making nationals again will be a challenging prospect given the quality of the teams jostling at the doorway in front of them, but Minnesota snatched that 8th and final spot last year and should be right in the mix to do the same this year.

BY EVENT

VAULT

2021 Event Ranking: 6

Lineup locks: Ona Loper, Lexy Ramler, Maddie Quarles, Mya Hooten, Haley Tyson
Lineup options: Marissa Jencks, Lauren Pearl, Gianna Gerdes, Halle Remlinger, Emily Koch, Kate Grotenhuis, Maya Albertin

There was a time when Minnesota tended to be underpowered on vault and struggled to keep up with the best teams. That’s all over now. Four very strong, 9.9+ Yurchenko 1.5s return from last year’s lineup with Loper, Ramler, Quarles, and Hooten. Last season, those four plus whatever local Yfulls happened to be at hand in the given week were enough to get Minnesota ranked 6th in the country on vault. This season, we can expect Haley Tyson’s 1.5 to join them, which will ideally score similarly to the returning Y1.5s and eliminate the need to count a 9.775-level full from either the 1 or 2 spot.

The Jencks 1.5 could give Minnesota a full lineup of 10.0 starts, but there’s also Pearl, who has vaulted a Yfull but with distance and amplitude that would probably rank it ahead of the 9.95 starts that went last season, all of which are still available. Gerdes typically provided the go-to full, with the possibility of a dash of Remlinger as well. In all, look for vault to be Minnesota’s best event in 2022 and most likely avenue for a scoring increase over last year.

BARS

2021 Event Ranking: 7

Lineup locks: Lexy Ramler, Ona Loper, Tiarre Sales, Hannah Willmarth
Lineup options: Haley Tyson, Mya Hooten, Olivia Reed, Halle Remlinger, Marissa Jencks

Item #1: Lexy Ramler has four career 9.975s on bars and no 10s. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject.

Similarly to vault, Minnesota’s bars lineup returns all of the postseason routines from last year and should be in excellent shape. Ramler, Sales, and Loper are the 9.9iest on the team, and there’s absolutely no reason to break up that 4-5-6 for this season. I’d also venture to say that the couple 9.9s and many mid-9.8s that Willmarth achieved last season should move her into lock status as well. Hooten is probably a pretty solid bet to return, but her bars is not the absolute sure-thing score that it is on vault and floor, so we’ll see how things play out with the new ones. 

Reed is an excellent contender here with a clean, efficient routine, while Tyson has a DLO 1/1 dismount that finishes so early it’s not even a bad idea. If this were elite, you’d all want her to upgrade to a Ray III. Sometimes the results haven’t come for Tyson in L10 because she’ll catch close on releases, but the toes, amplitude, and dismount are there, so the tools to make this a high-scoring routine are too irresistible. Both of those first years look like nice bets to fill out a lineup, as is Remlinger, who jumped in last season to get a couple 9.850s.

BEAM

2021 Event Ranking: 5

Lineup locks: Lexy Ramler, Tiarre Sales, Ona Loper
Lineup options: Haley Tyson, Emily Koch, Abbie Nylin, Ali Sonier, Lauren Pearl, Olivia Reed, Marissa Jencks

There’s a little more concern about Minnesota’s beam lineup this year because…what are we doing with our lives without Mary Korlin-Downs, but any lineup that has Lexy Ramler leading the way is starting from excellence. Ramler, Sales, and Loper will provide the core of high scores in 2022, but beyond that group there will be open spots ready to be won by whoever can prove the most competitive. Emily Koch seems to have an inside track. She made her way into the beam lineup at the end of her first season and could continue to grow into that position as time passes.

Still, Minnesota does need to find at least one new 9.9 to restock this lineup. It could be Tyson, who again has excellent ability on beam (beam is allegedly her weak event, but that’s more a consistency thing than a built-in execution thing), it could be Reed who has some compelling innate abilities there, and it could be Pearl, who has some of the best acro elements on the team as long as they find leaps that can work for her. 

Ability-wise, you’d also want senior Ali Sonier in here, though she exited the lineup midseason in 2021 after a 9.100. Keeping up with last year’s team totals on beam could be down to Sonier working her way back in for 2022. Abbie Nylin is another who didn’t make the final lineup in 2021 but should provide an option again.

FLOOR

2021 Event Ranking: 10

Lineup locks: Mya Hooten, Ona Loper, Lexy Ramler
Lineup options: Mallory Leneave, Haley Tyson, Halle Remlinger, Marissa Jencks, Lauren Pearl, Emily Koch, Abbie Nylin, Erin Fortman, Ali Sonier, Tiarre Sales

Floor proved the stumbling block (ish) for Minnesota last season—meaning that it sometimes, gasp, wasn’t 49.500—and it’s increasingly becoming the worst event to have as a stumbling block since the best teams are scoring just so high there and only look to get better in 2022. You can’t get away with 9.825s on floor anymore and expect to remain competitive. So, Minnesota will want to upgrade the early half of the lineup this year to complement the excellent returners at the end of the rotation.

In terms of those earlier spots, Leneave emerged as a necessary score once the elimination meets arrived last season and looks to continue on that path in 2022, and if you ever have Halle Remlinger healthy enough to do floor, hers is a routine you want in the lineup. Tyson has shown a DLO in L10, making her look like a solid contender, and Jencks and Pearl could see time as well in some of the question mark spots, as could Erin Fortman who was injured in the second meet last season. Finding three reliable 9.875+s from out of this mix is the key.  

As for the returners, Hooten is the star on floor now, earning a 10.000 last season, Loper gets huge numbers, and Ramler’s numbers are almost as huge. Ramler doesn’t tend to score quite as high on floor because everything is about tumbling control and there’s insufficient reward for those who perform leaps that aren’t drab. But, hers is still a big score and an obviously necessary routine. Those three should continue as lineup leaders.

Things Are Happening – December 9, 2021

A. Tom Forster Goes To Farm Upstate

Congratulations, you can now officially go back to having no opinions about Tom Forster and thinking about him never. No one is happier about this than Tom. The internet is in 2nd.

Yesterday, Tom Forster announced his resignation as High Performance Coordinator after a three-and-a-half year tenure marked by printing out the all-around results and standing there. While Forster successfully cleared the extremely low bar of not being an active criminal, he ultimately proved ill-suited to the strategic, technical, interpersonal, and public-facing requirements of the position. This had to happen.

It now falls to USAG to try to fill this nuclear sludge barrel of a job once again. Expectations are low. USAG may be best served at this point by hiring an elite national team head coach—one whose purview is routine feedback, coach development, and a non-abusive culture but who is explicitly not involved in team selection—then hiring a literal Excel document to select teams, and establishing a separate injury-petition committee made up of definitely-not-the-coaches to intervene on judgement calls that a spreadsheet and extensive documentation can’t manage.

But if USAG maintains the same structure, there are a few things that can be done to avoid some of the recent pitfalls.   

–Rewrite all selection methodology from scratch, making sure it is clear, detailed, and explicit for every single spot on any competition team or national team. Make sure it is published many months before selection, and make sure it is actually followed when selection occurs. Also, make sure it’s not just “the all-around standings” because that has no bearing on team score in 3-up, 3-count. It has to make sense.

For better or worse, I think we’ve moved beyond “the remaining spots will be at the discretion of the selection committee.” That’s not to say it doesn’t work—just ask Valentina, whose “I will pick the ones I like the most because I have eyes and obviously, and you all can shut your stupid fart nozzles” strategy proved the most successful by far this year. But that’s no longer an option for a USAG that might occasionally have to answer for its actions and should be trying to be…not horrible to everyone all the time? There will continue being no trust in the new national team coordinator, so every decision needs to be justifiable with evidence.

So if it’s not going to be “THE COMMITTEE’S DISCRETION,” while still trying to win and select the best teams, the system should be detailed, mathematical, and complicated. Math is not a vice. Complicated is not a vice. It’s how you can arrive at the actual most successful team while covering all the bases for all possible weirdies that might happen and trying to maintain some semblance of fairness in a process that is always going to be at least a little bit unfair.

I will obviously have a problem with it, and I’m not alone in that (hello, beloved gargoyles), but when you can point to, “See, this is the method, this is what we said we would do, and we stuck to it” things go better.

–Clearly communicate expectations to the athletes using human words. Secrets help nothing. This isn’t a reality show, much to the chagrin of NBC. You don’t need to create a dramatic reveal. No one should be surprised that they didn’t make the national team, or why. They should be in constant communication with the national team coordinator and know exactly what they have to do (where they have to place, what events they need to show and at what level) well in advance of any competition.

–Fully reconstruct national team camps as a learning experience rather than a proving-yourself experience—and completely separate them from public, full-routine, scored selection competitions. None of this verification camp business. Verification as a concept is an unhelpful holdover from the previous regime. National team camps should be a place where athletes and coaches learn from each other and get feedback from a national team staff that is empowered to intervene and qualified to provide expert skill analysis, as well as judges who can say “hey, Donatella just did a Zoom where she said that leap is XXXXXXX, so you shouldn’t do it,” rather than being a pressure cooker of secrets.

Experience trying to hit under pressure is also valuable, so by all means have more public competitions that are used to select teams for meets (we like watching gymnastics, and there’s no pressure like a camera), but that should be a completely separate thing from a training camp.

–Get smarter and more humble. The US is not the best team in the world, but should try to be again. Look at what the team that’s beating you is doing better than you instead of just assuming that you’re the best and that any time you don’t win is unfair or out of your control. Follow the trends and try to gain every tenth. Based on experience and precedent, I’m half-seriously worried that the US is going to show up in 2022 doing a bunch of side jumps on beam with the old technique, and that’s a problem.

–Select someone who is media savvy and good at handling criticism. This is a criticism-based job at which 90% of people will hate you at any given moment. You’re always the Big Bad. Be good at dealing with that instead of pissy about it.

–Also, still, don’t be an abuser or general criminal of any kind. I mean it shouldn’t need to be said, but this is USAG, so that winnows out at least 87% of the possible candidates.

B. Fun Stuff?

OK, this is mostly about Tom, but here’s something else to lighten the load.

It’s college preview season, and several of the teams are making their events available to your humble self before the season kicks off with opening day between Kentucky and Arizona State on January 5th. Here are the upcoming events you can actually watch so far:

Thursday, December 9
7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT – Michigan, Central Michigan, Western Michigan Exhibition (Stream – $) (Scores)

Friday, December 10
6:30pm ET/3:30pm PT – William & Mary Preview (Facebook)

Saturday, December 11
3:00pm ET/12:00pm PT – Georgia First Look (SEC+)

Friday, December 17
9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT – Utah Red Rocks Preview (Free stream)
9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT – Arizona State* (this used to have a stream listed but doesn’t anymore, FYI)
10:00pm ET/7:00pm PT – UCLA Meet the Bruins (P12N)

2022 Auburn Tigers

[wptb id=71580]

RANKING HISTORY
2021 – 35th**
2020 – 17th
2019 – 16th
2018 – 14th
2017 – 15th
2016 – 11th
2015 – 6th
2014 – 20th
2013 – 13th
2012 – 15th

2021 IN REVIEW

Auburn’s official final ranking of 35th last season gets a big heap of asterisks since the team was forced to withdraw from regionals because of COVID things. A more accurate representation of the season would be 15th place (where Auburn stood in the final standings before the postseason), a ranking pretty much on track with what we’ve seen from Auburn for the last half decade. Auburn had a very slow start to 2021 but pulled life together beginning in February for the kind of 197s we expect this team to get. Still, recording just one win in the conference (home against Georgia) and having the season artificially cut short will leave a sour and unsatisfying taste for 2021.

DEPARTED ROUTINES

Meredith Sylvia – BB
Sabrina Cheney – FX

THE NEW ONES

Auburn has five new gymnasts this season, the most noteworthy of the bunch being a little ol’ Olympic champion named Suni Lee, an athlete who outstrips by light years the pre-college accomplishments of any other gymnast who has gone to Auburn. It’s not possible to overstate the astronomical level of the expectations for her, and…come on, the 10s are already written down on bars and beam.

At Auburn’s recent preview, Lee showed a dismount-free bars routine that was about a cast handstand away from a perfect score, and on beam, she signaled the somewhat surprising intention to retain her side aerial + loso + loso for college. It’s totally unnecessary difficulty for college, but 1) Lee will be expected to bring unnecessary difficulty as the Olympic champion, and 2) this series does allow her the improvisational leeway to leave it at one loso if she feels off without compromising her start value. So I’m on board. Lee performed 9 tenths of bonus on beam over the weekend, while only 6 tenths are required to start from a 10. Not to mention the 9 tenths of bonus she showed on bars, which will go up to 11 tenths when she dismounts for real.  

Vault is the interesting one for me because it has never really been Lee’s friend, and she’ll be thrilled to leave the DTY behind in elite. But would the 1.5 work for her in college, or will Auburn go for the clean and comfortable full at a 9.95 start? Watch that space.

Joining Lee in this year’s new class is Sara Hubbard, who looks like a very convincing vault and floor competitor for the team. She has a Y1.5 on vault that will definitely see the lineup, and I’d expect her full-in to get into floor as well. Ananda Brown is another who owns the tumbling to make a very compelling case for herself on floor as part of a well balanced group overall. Besides Lee, this is mostly a vault and floor class, with Caroline Leonard also potentially providing depth options on those events.

Sophia Groth was the lone first year to compete all four events as Auburn’s preview and looks like a Swiss Army knife type, a gymnast who has a believable routine anywhere and could make any lineup depending on the needs of the team and how many of the 9.9s are available in a given week.

2022 PROJECTION

Improvement.

Yeah, it won’t be difficult to improve on 35th. But even so, the Suni injection alone will make Auburn far more competitive than the team showed throughout the regular season in 2021, and the additional vault and floor options provided by several of the other first years will help augment what proved to be Auburn’s weaker of the apparatuses last season. The big goal for Auburn—and greater challenge than simply starting quicker than last year and improving overall totals—will be to get out of this middle-teens, early-session-at-SECs rut that the team has found itself in lately, ideally elbowing into the top 10 or making the top half at the conference championship. That’s going to be extremely difficult and Auburn isn’t favored to do so, but it’s realistic enough to be the aim.

BY EVENT

VAULT

2021 Event Ranking: 23

Lineup locks: Drew Watson, Derrian Gobourne, Sara Hubbard, Suni Lee
Lineup options: Cassie Stevens, Ananda Smith, Adeline Sabados, Piper Smith, Olivia Hollingsworth, Sophia Groth, Payton Smith, Caroline Leonard, Jada Glenn

To some extent, Auburn underformed in 2021 on what should have been a strong event for the team given the Y1.5s available. As it happened, the lineup was as likely to go 48 as 49 and will need to step up the quality in 2022. Most important in achieving that change will be the new 1.5 from Hubbard and whatever vault Lee ends up performing, which should have a place in the lineup regardless. Pairing those two with the returning Y1.5s from Watson and Gobourne will provide the team with a higher-scoring and more competitive core. 

It should also allow Auburn to be a little choosier in terms of the Yfulls that fill out the lineup, of which there are plenty. It will just be a matter of finding out whose landings are the most reliably 9.850, versus who is the most likely to throw in a 9.725 that the team does not want to have to count again. The rankings from last season tell us that those next-best Yfulls would be Sabados and Piper Smith, though I’d probably bet on Stevens, and do want to see what Ananda Brown ends up coming in with as well.

BARS

2021 Event Ranking: 14

Lineup locks: Suni Lee, Derrian Gobourne, Aria Brusch
Lineup options: Piper Smith, Adeline Sabados, Cassie Stevens, Anna Sumner, Sophia Groth, Drew Watson, Olivia Hollingsworth, Gabby McLaughlin

When the lineup was on, bars was Auburn’s best event last season and the only apparatus to hit the 49.4 mark, which happened on two occasions. The addition of Suni Lee’s 12.everything of a routine will only make it even clearer that bars is the strength for Auburn in 2022.

Other than Lee, Auburn is probably fine keeping things the same with this lineup because there are six high-quality returning routines that provided weekly countable scores last year. Gobourne and Brusch were the most 9.9y in 2021, so they will be the most obvious returning choices, and Piper Smith came from the back of the pack last year to get some of Auburn’s best bars scores, including a 9.925. Sabados and Stevens have been mainstays in that bars lineup for several seasons, but Sumner was scoring right there with them in 2021, and Groth should be about in that same category of bars worker. So there are choices.  

BEAM

2021 Event Ranking: 14

Lineup locks: Suni Lee, Gabby McLaughlin, Cassie Stevens
Lineup options: Drew Watson, Morgan Leigh Oldham, Olivia Hollingsworth, Aria Brusch, Sophia Groth, Derrian Gobourne, Piper Smith

Auburn’s beam lineup will similarly be in raptures at the introduction of Suni Lee’s score, which will elevate a six that was talented but unsettled last season and also experiences the team’s biggest loss in not having Meredith Sylvia around anymore. Given the presumed scores from Lee, McLaughlin, and Stevens, Auburn should have a strong and consistent anchor half of the lineup in 2022 that can withstand many of the usual beam terrors. 

But settling the other half of the routines will be critical. There are soooo many beam-maybes on this team who competed 3-5 times last season, usually with one really strong routine, then a fall, then a fine one, then a wobbly one. There’s not a ton of obvious differences between the ~8 other beam options here. But Auburn needs to find the group. It’s possible that the three solid hits in the final three meets that the team got out of Oldham and Hollingsworth last season pointed the way. 

FLOOR

2021 Event Ranking: 24

Lineup locks: Derrian Gobourne, Suni Lee, Drew Watson, Cassie Stevens, Sara Hubbard
Lineup options: Ananda Brown, Aria Brusch, Olivia Hollingsworth, Adeline Sabados, Sophia Groth, Morgan Leigh Oldham, Piper Smith, Gabby McLaughlin

With seemingly every team this season counting floor as a strength while also bringing in 58 new floor specialists, Auburn needs an injection of quality, and injection of big, in 2022. It should happen. We’ll see how much managing of legs needs to be done with Suni Lee since there was that pre-Olympic period this year when they looked to be made entirely of pills and wishes. But any time she can go, she’ll be a boost for the floor lineup. Though on floor, the first-year class isn’t exclusively about Lee. Both Hubbard and Brown should present compelling options—if not locks for the six—that save the lineup from having to open with 9.7s that automatically take them out of it compared to peer teams who open with E an pass and then just do a log roll to Dua Lipa after that for 9.925.

If Auburn can introduce those three to the lineup, then obviously Gobourne will continue to be the star we don’t deserve for 9.9s, and Stevens and Watson should be able to return with occasional 9.9s of their own to make up a very competitive lineup. Aria Brusch may also be in there, and Olivia Hollingsworth has more floor in her than we saw last season, so the required repertoire of 9.850+s definitely exists.