Day 1 – Friday, August 9, 6:30pm CT (NBCSN)
Day 2 – Sunday, August 11, 6:30pm CT (NBC)

It’s the big one. At least until selection camp. Which, let’s be honest, is the bigger one. While Simone is Simone and blah blah blah, the supposed expansion of the senior national team to 10 members all named after nationals means that each of the 17 gymnasts in the senior field has something legitimate riding on this competition. Let’s go one by one.

Simone Biles

It may seem strange, but the least significant stakes in this meet accompany the performance of Simone Biles, the inevitable champion. She’s going for her casual sixth national championship, and it would take a catastrophic number of falls for her not to achieve that (I’m thinking at least four across the two days, probably more like five or six). Even if that were somehow to happen, it wouldn’t change anything with regard to her world-favorite status. Here, she just has to show up and give the people a thrill.

In that regard, let’s talk about that triple double. Because Simone showed us the triple double in podium training at Classic, that means she basically has to compete it at nationals, right? That’s the implicit agreement? Correct.

Sloane Blakely

Blakely’s goal here will be to try to make the national team, and as a member of that Pan Ams training squad of 8, she has to think she’s at least in the picture. But it’s going to be difficult. Blakely competed three events at Classic (VT, BB, FX) for a 39.900, and you have to think she needs to add back bars at nationals to have a shot at a national team spot. Bars isn’t always a great score for Blakely, but she did go 13.500 at Gymnix this year, which is her best score on the event as a senior elite. If we take that number and add it to her Classic total, that would put her at 53.400 in the all-around, which would have placed 13th.

We don’t know exactly how these national team spots are going to be assigned, if it will go directly by AA or if there will be some kind of thought and strategy used, but I have to think Blakely is the kind of athlete who needs to get there by AA placement. Blakely is capable of scoring much better than she did at Classic on both beam and floor—she didn’t fall but can realistically add at least a half point to her E score on both pieces—but she’s probably looking at needing to have an ideal meet both days of competition to get into that top 10.

Jade Carey

For the most part, Jade did Jade on vault and floor at Classic. Of course there are form things we can go into, but she tied for both the 2nd-highest floor score in the competition and the 2nd-highest vault score. Her argument to go to worlds to compete vault and floor for the team and for possible individual medals remains quite strong, and as long as she keeps it up on those events, she’s in solid shape.

To me, her bars and beam routines are essentially irrelevant to her prospects. Putting together worlds team permutations, I don’t see a possible realistic team where she does those events even in qualification. They have no bearing on her quest for an individual Olympic spot and should have no bearing on her position on the national team, which should be a lock. I say should.

Still, hitting bars and beam at nationals could put her surprisingly high in the all-around standings.

Jordan Chiles

Without much training time under her belt, Chiles set a solid progress point at Classic, particularly with a beam routine that looked more confident than we’ve ever seen her on that event.

That Classic performance was good enough for 11th place in the AA, but to get on the national team, and to make the selection camp group, we’re going to have to see Chiles level-up again at championships beyond what we saw at Classic. She’ll need to reproduce those strong bars and beam routines while also delivering the floor landings and difficulty—or, dare I say, bring back the Amanar again. If she does, she’ll have an excellent shot at getting on the national team, but Chiles is certainly not in a safe position. She has to hit, hit, hit at nationals to make it happen. Last year, she didn’t hit, hit, hit at nationals, placed 11th overall, and didn’t make the national team—though she did attend the selection camp as a non-national team invitee. Continue reading US Nationals – Senior Women’s Preview →

I’m beginning this preview of junior nationals with a look at the overall point or value of winning a junior national championship, which has come under scrutiny in recent quads as the power of junior national championships as a predictor of senior elite success has drastically declined.

Many of the most decorated US athletes at worlds and Olympics in the last couple quads—Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Morgan Hurd—never won a junior national championship. Meanwhile, of the champions of the last 8 junior national competitions, only Laurie Hernandez has (as yet) gone on to make a world/Olympic team as a senior. Of course, Leanne Wong is still TBD. There’s a lot of “never healthy enough to compete to full potential as a senior elite” going on in that group.

US JUNIOR NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

2018 – Leanne Wong
2017 – Maile O’Keefe
2016 – Maile O’Keefe
2015 – Laurie Hernandez
2014 – Jazzy Foberg
2013 – Bailie Key
2012 – Lexie Priessman
2011 – Katelyn Ohashi
2010 – Kyla Ross
2009 – Kyla Ross
2008 – Jordyn Wieber
2007 – Rebecca Bross
2006 – Shawn Johnson
2005 – Natasha Kelley
2004 – Nastia Liukin
2003 – Nastia Liukin
2002 – Carly Patterson
2001 – Kristal Uzelac
2000 – Kristal Uzelac
1999 – Kristal Uzelac
1998 – Morgan White
1997 – Marline Stephens
1996 – Vanessa Atler
1995 – Mina Kim
1994 – Dominique Moceanu
1993 – Jennie Thompson
1992 – Lanna Apisukh
1991 – Anne Woynerowski
1990 – Hilary Grivich

This recent trend is a stark departure from the period of 2002-2010,  when every junior national champion went on to make at least one senior world/Olympic team, and we had a streak of Patterson, Liukin, Johnson, Bross, Wieber, and Ross as junior champions that would lead one to believe that a direct correlation existed between the junior national championship and world/Olympic success. The expectation we used to have, that those who win junior nationals immediately go to the front of the conversation for future Olympic teams, is fully gone.

It’s worth noting, however, that junior national championships not necessarily translating into ALL THE MEDALS as a senior elite is hardly a new phenomenon. If you go back to Kristal Uzelac, and Marline Stephens, and Mina Kim, we’ve seen this story before. And it’s not as though athletes like Biles, Raisman, Douglas, and Hurd weren’t on the radar as juniors. Far from it. The year before they turned senior, Biles placed 3rd in the juniors, Raisman was 3rd, Douglas was 4th, and Hurd was 5th. They were right there. Just not THE CHAMPION and not nearly at the level we would later come to see from them as seniors.

That’s why I don’t think you can make a categorical argument one way or another about the value of winning a junior national championship. Kyla Ross was perfect from an egg and continues to be perfect in NCAA ten years after her first junior national title, and Laurie Hernandez won junior nationals the year before the Olympics and had a perfect trajectory to peak exactly on time for Rio.

But at a certain point, you have to look at these recent junior national championship results and think that if the goal is senior elite success, pushing to be good enough to become junior national champion at such a young age has got to seem…optional at best? Certainly not necessary. From Ohashi to Priessman to Key to Foberg to O’Keefe, we’ve seen too many recent junior national champions who showed their best elite gymnastics as juniors rather than seniors.

So on that note, let’s talk about who might become junior national champion this year. I’m just a ray of sunshine today. Continue reading US Junior Nationals Preview →

Item #1: Morgan vs. Ragan vs. Riley

Yes, I’m beginning this preview with a little twist and not starting with Simone. Now that Simone is back and already looking inevitable again, the big story shifts to figuring out who will be her all-around partner in the role that Kyla Ross and Aly Raisman inhabited so diligently last quad. It’s going to get real.

Morgan Hurd is the defending world champion, Ragan Smith is the defending national champion, and Riley McCusker is the only non-Simone American to have gone 57 this year.

Only 2 people will be able to go in the AA final at worlds.
Only 3 people will (most likely) go in the AA in qualification.
This town ain’t big enough.

Well, it’s big enough for them all to go to worlds, potentially. That would be…sort of a good team. But this town definitely isn’t big enough for everyone to fulfill her AA dreams at the same time.

On both difficulty and execution, all three are tightly packed and could end up finishing in any order. At US Classic, McCusker ended up a little more than a point ahead of Hurd, who had a fall, while Hurd had 0.3 more difficulty than McCusker. If Smith had done AA, she likely would have been ahead of both on difficulty but behind both in the final scores because of her miss on bars.

(Smith did have some more Stadler Tkatchev-ing problems in podium training today—I saw two mat slams and a tuck-to-save—but worked it out occasionally. That Ricna will be one of the key skills of nationals.)

While an actual decision about where all three stand in the all-around picture will be made based more on selection camp and closer-to-worlds training than on this competition, nationals should still give us an indication about which way the wind is blowing. Does McCusker have the floor composition and vault consistency to keep up with the other two? Is Smith back to full strength? Is she adding the upgrades she teased at Classic? I didn’t notice any upgrades in podium training for Smith for the moment, save for a triple wolf on beam instead of double wolf. Even without upgrades, she’s still looking at a modest D-score advantage. But is she ready to beat the others? Continue reading 2018 US Nationals – Senior Podium Training & Preview →

Junior nationals! It’s like senior nationals, but doesn’t matter as much.

Reinforced by, well, everything has been the emergence of a junior Big Four—sort of like the Russia, USA, China, Romania version of the Big Four, except no one is Romania, may she rest in peace. Sunisa Lee, Jordan Bowers, Leanne Wong, and Kayla DiCello have created some real distance from the rest of the pack and every expectation is that they will fight it out among themselves to see who is the 2018 junior national champion.

Juniors compete on Friday and Sunday at 1:30 ET, streaming online.

For the win

What’s exciting is that each of the four looks just as realistic as any other to win the title. A convincing argument can be made for all.

Scoring Potential – This is where Sunisa Lee has the advantage. When she is hitting her intended D scores on all four pieces, she cannot be caught. Her potential bars difficulty is worlds ahead of the other juniors right now, but she also boasts the top floor score of the group with 13.800. I wouldn’t have guessed that without looking, but it proves that it’s not all about the bars and beam for Lee. The big test for her will be bringing all that difficulty back (she did not show full D at US Classic) and doing it in hit routines across two full days of competition, therefore not rendering herself vulnerable to the Sturdy Gurdys who don’t have such big routines.

Winning Pedigree – The best way to figure out who’s going to win is to look at who has won before. The top juniors have ventured to a couple major international competitions already this year—Pacific Rims and the Junior Pan American Championships—and on each occasion Jordan Bowers has come home with the all-around gold medal, outscoring the very people she’ll be expected to outscore to win a junior national championship this week, and doing it in front of the discerning judging panels of international competitions. Continue reading 2018 US Nationals – Junior Preview →