MICHIGAN

Who Is She?

Michigan introduces another concentrated class of four JO athletes this year, led by one of the top L10 recruits in the country, Carly Bauman. Bauman was a Chow’s gymnast who has been blinking brightly on the radar for several years, ever since she won her junior division at JO Nationals in 2016 and followed that up with the junior title at the Nastia Cup in 2017. Bauman went on to win JO Nationals again in 2018 and placed 2nd on beam and 4th on bars in 2019.

In 2019, only a floor fall kept her from placing among the very top AAer in her age division, a group led by Kiya Johnson that also included Bauman’s new teammate Naomi Morrison, who took 5th overall. Morrison, originally an Oregon State verbal who switched to Michigan last year, posted her best-ever result at that 2019 competition, which featured top-8 showings on vault, bars, and floor.

Bauman and Morrison will be joined in Michigan’s class by Reyna Guggino, previously an Eastern Michigan verbal who switched to Michigan shortly before signing day last year. Guggino has shown competitive results on vault and floor at state competitions over the years, especially lately, but is among those athletes who were never able to qualify to nationals because qualification is based only on AA score.

Rounding out the class is Jenna Mulligan, whose career highlight was a remarkably strong performance at 2018 JO Nationals, her only time qualifying to that meet, where she finished 5th on floor and 8th on beam, and made you say, “Oh hey that…”

Continue reading Freshman Preview: Michigan →

As previously established, the official platform of this website is to pretend this is a normal season and that everything is normal and LALALALALA can’t hear you. Which means, the normal thing to do about this time of year is freshman previews so that we can start making wild proclamations about who’s going to be better or worse this season. Up first, Georgia. Because I said so.

GEORGIA

Who Is She?

Georgia has welcomed a trio of new gymnasts headlined by former junior elite obsession Victoria Nguyen. Nguyen burst onto the scene in 2014 as a Chow’s baby who scored a massive 15.200 on beam the second day of nationals, the highest beam score of the junior competition and third-highest of the entire meet—behind only Simone Biles and Kyla Ross.

The remainder of Nguyen’s elite career was marked by being injured every 30 seconds of her life, but she did return to elite as an Everest athlete in 2019, where the stupid elite qualifying rules meant she could compete only vault and bars at American Classic and we didn’t even get to see beam. But I’m totally over it.

Nguyen is joined in this class by Katie Finnegan (no relation), who arrives at Georgia a year early to save the day. Finnegan is among the group of new 2021 athletes in the odd position of having almost never competed as a senior. She was a junior in 2019, and then the everything happened, and now she’s coming to college a year early. That doesn’t mean anything about anything; it’s just unusual to have your senior division years get…skipped. In the junior F division at 2019 JO Nationals, Finnegan placed 6th all-around with a particularly significant (for Georgia purposes) 3rd place on bars.

Nhyla Bryant makes it three. Bryant qualified to L10 Nationals for the first time in 2019 after a very strong showing at regionals, going on to place 9th on floor in Senior C at nationals. Bryant has consistently scored quite high on both vault and floor throughout her L10 career.

Continue reading Freshman Preview: Georgia →

Freshman playlists are now up for the big four conferences, with (probably, most likely, we’ll see) more to come. Because there might be a season?

Although clearly the real sport has become gymnasts publicly calling out the COVID-responsibility levels of other teams, and I am fully here for it. Why have we even been bothering with routines and skills until now? This new sport is so much better.

As always, I try to use YouTube links when possible to provide for full accessibility, but if they’re not available or too old to be relevant, I’ll go with Flo.

Some teams have not finalized their rosters yet, so those are listed as TBC and include the gymnasts who have previously announced commitments to join those schools this coming season—unless we’ve since heard official deferral news about them (e.g. Jordan Chiles, Ana Padurariu, etc.).

SEC Freshman Playlist

Big Ten Freshman Playlist

Pac-12 Freshman Playlist

Big 12 Freshman Playlist

For today’s freshman feature, I’m looking at the top JO athletes in this year’s incoming class that I haven’t yet previewed as part of a team’s overall freshman outlook.

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Chloe Widner – Stanford

Widner is a Texas Dreams athlete who won the Senior F title at JO Nationals this year, which followed a 6th-place finish in 2018 and a 2nd-place finish in 2017. She’s joining Canadian elite Jade Chrobok in this incoming class for Stanford, one of the most exciting the team has brought in for years.

VT

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FX

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Helen Hu – Missouri

Hu finished her JO career with two consecutive 2nd-place AA finishes at JO Nationals in 2019 and 2018, winning the bars and beam titles on each occasion.

VT

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Continue reading Freshman Feature: Secret Weapons →