Congratulations to our week 8 champion, Alex McMurtry’s floor, which used a boost from Team Florida to run away with the title ahead of Hallie Mossett’s floor in second. In an upset, Nicole Lehrmann’s bars 10 outpaced McKenzie Wofford’s bars 10 for the third position by a mere 9 votes.
On to week 9! A week marked by at least one 10 on every event, twelve scores of 9.975 or higher, and thirty-seven scores of 9.950 or higher. Thirty-seven.
Congratulations to our week 1 champion, MyKayla Skinner’s floor routine, which just edged out Kennedi Edney’s vault in 2nd and Maggie Nichols’ bars in 3rd.
Each week, I’ll put up the top routines of the previous weekend and let you guys vote on which routine wins the award for best of the week. Deciding the nominees is up to me (mwahahahaha) and is based on 3) score, 2) overall quality, and 1) which ones are easily available online—aka, which ones have been uploaded by our dear NastiaFan101. Because, you know, we need to be able to see them in order to vote for them. So if you want to vote for Elizabeth Price…get those meets to start taking place in the present day. With color televisions. And the iron horse.
Feel free to use the comments for reasoning and/or write-in votes.
As a team, Oklahoma has achieved pretty much everything there is to achieve in college gymnastics—including now winning a national championship outright—but one thing Oklahoma hasn’t done before is enter a season as the clear favorite and presumed winner of the title, a team that can only meet expectations not exceed them, a team with nothing to gain and everything to lose. So have fun with that. Don’t worry about it, just anything short of absolute perfection and constant victory culminating in a championship will be a tragic disappointment to everyone. It’s fine.
The coaches, me, and the readers of this site (you know, the big three) all agree that Oklahoma is the most talented team and should win a third title. So let’s get into why. Continue reading Oklahoma 2017→
The quest for the individual AA title and event titles has never been anywhere in the vicinity of a primary focus during the NCAA gymnastics ALL ABOUT THE TEAM Championship, brought to you by THE CLOSEST GROUP OF SISTERS. Spoiler alert: It’s all about the team. All in. No regrets. Life lesson. Teamwork. Growth. Having each other’s backs.
Individual accolades are the ugly stepsister of college gymnastics, the one who is hidden in the attic and not allowed to come out when guests are around. (You have one of those too, right?) Publicly acknowledging a desire for individual recognition is strictly taboo. I’m just here to help the team succeed. No member of the team is more important than any other. Leader in the training gym.
To reinforce this culture, the coaches elected to do away with Sunday’s individual event finals entirely this season, ostensibly because of the new TV deal that will televise Friday and Saturday’s competitions live, even though…what does that have to do with Sunday? You could still have competition on Sunday, even if it’s not part of the TV broadcast. This has never been explained. Now, the individual event titles will be decided on Friday along with the all-around and the qualification to Super Six, making it, if possible, even more of a crapshoot afterthought parade of nothing than it was before. Remember how Lloimincia Hall never made a floor final in her whole career?
Individual Events
Let’s be honest, the winner of each event title will be whichever gymnast anchors the lineup of the last team competing on that event. You know it. On vault, that would be Gnat in the first session and Bresette in the second session, so we’ll go with Gnat. She would likely be the choice anyway. On bars, that’s Rogers in the first semi and Sternberg in the second, and I have no problem at all picking Rogers to win bars (even though it will probably be Wofford or one of the Floridas, both going in the 5th rotation of their semifinals). On beam, it’s Sloan in the first semi and Capps in the second semi. OOOF. Two very likely nominees to win. We’ll go with Capps. On floor, it’s Atkinson in the first and Hughes in the second. That’s tougher. They’ll both get good scores, but Gnat and McGee are probably the floor favorites.
Still, sticking to my principle that scores are too heavily based on lineup and rotation order and that the winner of each event will simply be the most recent competitor, my official picks are Gnat on vault, Rogers on bars, Capps on beam, and Atkinson on floor. Feel free to submit your own. We’ll all have a good shot of winning because I’m sure there will be a billion ties even with the increased number of judges.
Silver lining: we will no longer have to wait through an interminably long event final because thousands of qualifiers tied for fourth place in a semifinal. Those vault finals some years, when they did two vaults, and had 25 qualifiers…
Plus, what would have been the day of event finals is now the day of the WAG Test Event, so we can still use that to help pretend our lives are full. Romania, you guys. We broke it and it never got fixed.
All-around
The all-around title, also decided on Friday, is usually slightly less random, but only slightly. We all know who the top all-arounders are, and they’ll each be pecking around the top of the standings, but then also sometimes Kim Jacob wins. When the scores are this closely packed, weird things can happen very easily. To break the race down, I’ll run through the gymnasts I see as the most likely winners, so we know it will be none of them. Continue reading National Championship Preview Part 4: Do We Care About Individuals? (Not Really)→
Oklahoma takes over the #1 ranking this week. That seemed unlikely heading in, but the Sooners managed to pour some 197.9 all over the NCAA as Chayse Capps suddenly became the most important all-arounder in your life, while Florida had a late-meet nasty and lost to Georgia. Georgia. With Georgia beam.
Our regal 10.000 of the week comes courtesy of Capps, because of course it does. Finally. You can see the video of her beam 10 on Aunt Flo, but it’s behind the iron subscription curtain. So otherwise, just imagine every other beam routine you’ve seen Chayse Capps do, and it’s that. Just a 10 this time. And with a walkover to scale.
In other big routine news, NastiaFan101 posted Sophina the diva’s floor routine and got it trending all over faceplace and the information superhighway. Hero’s work. It’s almost like social media is a tool that can be used to attract attention to the sport, or something. Teams should definitely continue not taking advantage of that at all and waiting for fans to do the work for them.
Love. Exciting. Beautiful. Fun and crowd-pleasing without being a joke. Though it will be interesting to see what it scores away from home given factors like whatever is happening after that switch ring. Or, knowing UCLA and the health situation and the Sophina being in the floor lineup situation, we’ll never see this routine ever again. RIP, Hallie Mossett’s feet.
This is why it has been frustrating to spend three seasons watching Sophina actively not making the floor lineup. Because she’s capable of this. Her performance elevates the lineup, and when we have DeJesus and Mossett going at the same time (ever?), it will start to feel like a classic, thrilling UCLA floor rotation of years ago. Even Cipra, whose routine is not my taste, moves quite well and performs with style. It’s encouraging to see that this year for a team that, especially in the couple seasons post-McCullough and EHH, had to keep the best dancers out of the lineup in favor of tumblers who could get the scores but didn’t really want to have to dance about it, when it was all Pritchett and Courtney and Zam. (Stop freaking out, I love the Zam, but she never really looked thrilled at the idea of doing these routines.)
23. Ohio State – 195.165 Week 5: 196.350 Week 5 leaders: AA – Harrison 39.175; VT – Stone 9.875; UB – Hofland 9.875; BB – Hofland 9.925; FX – Mattern 9.900
24. West Virginia – 195.140 Week 5 A: 195.200 Week 5 A leaders: AA – None; VT – Muhammad 9.900; UB – Goldberg 9.825; BB – Gillette 9.875; FX – Muhammad 9.825
Week 5 B: 195.250 Week 5 B leaders: AA – None; VT – Muhammad, Koshinski 9.850; UB – Goldberg 9.825; BB – Tolbert 9.800; FX – Koshinski 9.850
-Florida gets a special squint this week for a significant beam and floor meltdown in Georgia. It happens. It’s not changing any expectations for Florida’s potential this postseason. Beam has been mostly solid up until now (it was the first beam fall for both Baker and Boren this year), so while it’s something to watch especially because Baker did go on that run of beam falls last season, it’s not a thing yet. They are clearly missing Boyce, but Sloan and Ernst should be able to carry the load with an occasional 9.900 from McMurtry.
Floor depth is the bigger concern. This week, Bridgey was sick and Sloan had a bad one, and the score immediately fell apart. There’s no competitive-scoring backup option, meaning there’s no room for an injury or for Bridgey to continue being out of form if Florida is going to fend off Oklahoma, LSU, and Alabama, all of whom will bring lineups with six legitimate 9.9s once April hits. It puts a lot of pressure on Baker and Sloan for 9.950s.
-Oklahoma is ranked first on bars. Bars was my biggest concern this year because of having to throw in people like Jackson and Capps who haven’t been good enough to make the lineup in the past, but…it’s working?
-LSU recorded a very encouraging 197.425, finally delivering (almost entirely) on bars and beam at the same meet. Fall potential still remains a worry on some of the most beautiful routines, like Finnegan’s everything and Macadaeg’s beam, but this score is particularly encouraging because LSU is capable of much better, particularly on vault which peaked at 9.875 this week.
It’s hilarious to me that Gnat performed the exact same DTY she has done for three weeks, but took a small step this time, resulting in a 9.875 instead of a 10. Because that small step was worth .150? Amazing how when someone doesn’t stick, other deductions lose their invisibility powers.
-The top six teams on vault all have at least two Yurchenko 1.5s in their vault lineups. The highest any team has scored so far this year for a lineup with one or zero 1.5s is Arkansas’s 49.275. Contrast that with the best lineups featuring 2+ 1.5s, which are still going into the 49.4s and up to 49.500. Giving up multiple tenths on vault is an unacceptable proposition in the postseason, a particularly troubling issue for Utah and UCLA, who will struggle to keep up without joining the cult of vault difficulty especially if the vaults continue looking like they did on Saturday.
-Alabama needs Lauren Beers. The Tide did not have to count a fall over the weekend, scoring largely as expected except for Beers having a no good, very bad day all over the place (and Aja Sims getting a 9.6 on beam because huh?), but that was enough to bring the team total down to 196.775 and cause Alabama to lose ground on all the major players except Florida.
-Auburn got a 196.825, which was definitely a TWU score but also a symbolic performance, returning from two significant injuries in the previous week to look just as competitive if not better than before. The depth was tested, and the depth came through.
-Is there any all-arounder getting held down in the scores more than Amanda Wellick? Here. Take this scrap of 9.825. Fetch.
-Oh yeah. Georgia’s beam. It’s still horrifying, with yet another week of counting fall. Will this victory over Florida help, or will beam remain a soul-crushing experience ad infinitum? Once again, it’s a must-watch rotation this weekend at home against LSU.
This season is all about the hands-free routine, and while it seems to be mostly working for Ernst, it didn’t work for Peng, and it’s not working for Babalis. Floor has turned out better as she’s starting to nail those round-off + double backs, but that beam routine just looks so uncomfortable and challenging for her. As it does for everyone on Georgia except Mary Beth Box, who shows her confidence in the speed and aggression of every movement. She needs to teach a class called “How to work beam without looking like you’re about to have diarrhea 101” and everyone needs to take it.
-Denver! A second-straight Nina McGee. I mean 196. Encouragingly, there were lots of 9.875s from supporting players this time around, which helps Denver’s prospects since it can’t all be about one person. Denver does get a few home 196s every season that don’t necessarily represent postseason potential, so the real test will come the next two weekends at road meets in which they will be directly compared to the likes of Oklahoma and Alabama. Those two meets will tell us where this team really is.
-Missouri broke the 196.5 barrier for the first time since the famous 2010 regionals performance.
-I haven’t talked about Lindsay Mable much so far this year, so…she continues being Lindsay Mable and continues keeping Minnesota competitive by herself. I’m worried about next season. Here’s her beam just because.
-George Washington took the torch back from New Hampshire this week with a 196.075 to New Hampshire’s 195.550. New Hampshire is absolutely killing it on beam but does not have competitive vaults, which makes it very difficult to get those 196s and puts a lot of pressure on bars and beam, while George Washington has the bigger vaults and higher scoring potential but gets very erratic scores for them. EAGLs will be good this year.
-Lots of Pac-12 Monday meets! Stanford, Arizona, Oregon State, Cal, Washington, and Arizona State all in action tonight.
That Florida gymnastics isn’t marketing a shirt that says, “On Fridays, we get 10s” is ludicrous. Verging on lyyyyyudicrous. Florida’s meet was the closest to a postseason-level performance we’ve seen so far this year (closest, but not there by any means), and now the Gators lead the rankings by a big, heaping margin this week with that 687.900 (because of Florida at home), highlighted by a “yeah, I’m down with that” 10.000 for Bridget Sloan on beam, a “squint…but also that Dos Santos” 10.000 for Kennedy Baker on floor, and a “Bahahahaha” 10.000 for Alex McMurtry on bars. At least she has a same-bar release this year.
Kathy is not OK with these piked giants. The judges are. The interesting thing is that McMurtry gets a heaping load of side-eye for this bars routine every time because she gets such high scores, but if she were going, say, 2nd or 3rd in the lineup and getting a 9.850 for this routine, we would be standing up and applauding for how much she has improved on bars from her Level 10 career, when she was getting 8s for hit routines. Compare her 10.000 to this routine from the Nastia in 2013, which scored 8.925, uninspiring even by JO scoring standards. Improvements, clearly.
But let’s be honest, the biggest difference between 2013 and 2016 is going 6th in a Florida lineup. Many of the factors that got her an 8.925 remain, hence the saltiness about this 10.
And now Baker and Sloan.
Kennedy Baker is like, “This is the seventh-best floor routine I’ve done at Florida, and this is the 10?”
-The top 10 is still sort of a work in progress at this point because UCLA and Utah are yet to compete tonight, which will change the dynamic. How Utah adapts to life without Kari Lee will be the most interesting part of tonight’s meets, but Valorie is teasing a Peng vault as well. It begins…?
-In addition to the four 10s recorded this week, Nicole Artz went 9.975 on floor, Aja Sims went 9.975 on beam for sticking her double tuck and showing everyone what dance elements are, and Bailie Holst went 9.975 on bars for a routine I haven’t seen yet. But Minnesota is the best about uploading all the routines to youtube, so I’m sure we’ll see it in due time.
-New Hampshire is in a fight with George Washington to see who can be the new, cool team this year, and UNH is gaining every week as Casey Lauter continues to be the gymnast you wish you had on your fantasy gym team. We need to make sure she makes it to nationals. Here’s her 9.925 on beam (along with all the other northeast-based routines your heart could desire from David Pendrys).
-Lizzy Leduc had a rough start to her NCAA career in those first couple meets, but a 9.900 on beam and a 9.875 on floor over the weekend are very good signs that my anticipated O’Connor-Horth-Kato-Leduc quadrangle of triumph may come to fruition after all.
-Grace Williams hit a 39.500 in the AA, the best mark of her career by over a tenth. With Ashley Lambert MIA again, that increases the pressure on Williams and Blanske to be all the types of fantastic, and this is much more the kind of number we expected for Williams based on her exceptional JO career.
-Fun game: Denver scored 196.125 on Saturday. Without Nina McGee, the score would have been 195.475. That’s an MVP. McGee better not get overlooked when it comes to naming the AAI six this year, even though Bridget Sloan has already won it. This is also a fun game to play with Ebee and Stanford, since Stanford would be ranked 600th without her.
-Georgia hit beam this week sort of! We’ll take a sort of. It was a beam rotation that the Gymdogs endured rather than thrived in, but that’s the first step. Vaculik came into the lineup, and weirdly, this is the most confident I’ve ever seen her look on beam. She’s a beautiful beam worker (it should be her best event) when she’s not terrified. We need this from her because two of Georgia’s other lovely beam options, Schick and Cherrey, may have to be jettisoned by the business-end of the season for consistency. Even if Georgia does work out beam, it may not be the strength it could have been if that means sacrificing style and execution to get six hit routines.
-Also, Brittany Rogers is a lunatic woman and attempting to compete Georgia/Florida and Elite Canada this week. How is that…I don’t even…? In other news, someone get her legs a therapy dog.
Georgia’s Brittany Rogers will be doing double duty this weekend! Competing Fri vs. UF, flying to Canada Sat, Elite Canada Sun #NCAAgym
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js -The coach who picked Boise State #1 in preseason is looking at us all right now and going, “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmm.” Except not really because…#1?
-Arkansas defeated Auburn in the Battle for Underdog SEC Darling of the Year, cementing the position as an outsider pick for a real postseason run in a meet that was marred by the physical destruction of every possible Auburn gymnast. With Phillips and Engler going down, the vault lineup in particular will need some serious help, putting more pressure on Atkinson, Rott, and Demers to bring the big numbers to overcome the inevitable low replacement scores.
-Sadly, a streak ended over the weekend when Michigan went sub-49 on beam for the first time since March 15, 2014. The fall from Artz was particularly unexpected, and while Michigan did record a perfectly fine 196.550 in the loss to Nebraska, the precarious depth situation did rear its head with the lack of Casanova clearly felt by all, particularly people watching that vault rotation. Michigan has no intention of counting Brown’s vault score, which means the other five must not only hit but perform ideal vaults to keep the total competitive.
-LSU continues to break hearts on beam, recording a 48.600 and dropping to a wholly unbefitting beam ranking of 18. This week, the Tigers had only two truly acceptable hits, from Hambrick and Gnat, which isn’t good enough even for this point in the season. Both of the falls came from gymnasts missing skills they never miss, Ewing on her layout and Finnegan on her triple wolf, but this can’t be dismissed as an anomaly because falls and weird 9.700s have been the name of the game in pretty much every meet this season. LSU, you’re on beam watch. Not everything can be Ashleigh Gnat’s job.
-There’s less to say about Alabama and Oklahoma other than that they looked goooood over the weekend. Alabama showed LSU what a beam recovery is and gleefully took advantage of a juicy Florida road score, even while continuing to exploring depth and shunning a top-strength lineup/missing Jetter. So many floor options. There are still questions about how competitive bars will be against the best teams, as well as who the six vaulters are (I’m not convinced by Bailey or Bresette yet, but Beers, Brannan, Guerrero, Winston, McNeer, TBD is enough to be getting on with), but the meet against Florida was a very good sign in spite of the loss.
-The last two weeks, we’re starting to see the performances we expected from Oklahoma from the very first week of the season: not pristine post-season level, but impressive, consistent, and clearly 197. Yes, it was Metroplex and there were some Metroplexy scores in getting to that 197.550, a number that flatters a meh-landed vault lineup and too many wobbles on beam, but for the end of January, this is how a title-contending team should look. Also, Chayse Capps’ best event is bars now. Apparently. I don’t know either. I think there’s still room to play around with those bars and beam lineups to bring out the best options. Are Jackson and Capps final lineup on bars (though if Capps keeps scoring like this…I guess so)? Is Jones final-six on beam? We’ll see how this progresses.
The final preview. We’re going on fumes now. Soon, I won’t have to use the word potential again for a whole year. Confetti. And also the meets will happen. That’s fine too, I guess. Michigan is already out of the gates, winning Cancun with a 196.975, led by Artz and Karas 9.9ing all over the place. That’ll do. Arkansas counted multiple falls. That won’t do.
2016 Outlook OK, Sooners. The coaches have spoken, and it’s your turn to win this year. The coaches poll is binding. Weirdly, Oklahoma underperformed at Super Six last year, something we’re not accustomed to seeing from this team when not ravaged by injury, though I wouldn’t really use that as an indicator for how things will go this season. As has been the case every year since the breakthrough in 2010, Oklahoma ranks among the top couple favorites for the title, and given the team’s penchant for starting quickly, Oklahoma is the best bet to spend the lion’s share of the regular season at #1. The difference between being an easy Super Six bet (a given) and a title favorite this year, however, will lay in the team’s ability to manage its sudden Dowellessness and overcome the depletion of the bars lineup, something Oklahoma has proven quite adept at in the past.
Winning this season will be more challenging than it has been in the past couple years because the Sooners have suffered a net routine loss from that 2015 third-place result, putting them in a position of now having to do more with less. Success in 2016 will be borne from developing existing routines into 9.9s they haven’t been so far.
Key Competitor Which brings me to Charity Jones. Jones came to Oklahoma at the tail end of those years when we were still sort of concerned about whether the team had enough power to wake the judges up out of their 9.850 comas (we were so young then). She was supposed to be a huge part of a power renaissance but has been perpetually MIA since then, competing just a bars routine or vault here and there at the very end of seasons. Now without Dowell, with Kanewa still on the comeback trail, and with a class of newbies more likely to make a mark on bars and beam, the team will be exceptionally reliant on someone like Jones to fill out the power-event lineups with competitive scores that keep the Sooners on the 49.5-everywhere track that has made them perennial title contenders.
Vault
Brenna Dowell’s 1.5+ vault repertoire would have been an asset this season, so it’s natural to expect some dip in the scores without her. Still, Oklahoma retains enough important vaults that this should still be a top-5 vaulting team. (How many teams have I declared top-5 vaulting teams this year? Is it more than 5? I’M THE BEST.) Haley Scaman remains the star. She downgraded from the 1.5 for the scores a couple years ago, but she spent a whole season getting 9.875s for that 1.5 and can upgrade back to it no problem. It’s worth it for her to go for the 1.5, but we’ll have to see how well she scores for it compared to the 9.900-9.925s she could still get for a full this season. The landing must be there to make the 1.5 valuable. Ah, the strategy of it all. Regardless, it will be the important score in this lineup, along with Ali Jackson, who performed her 1.5 all last season and comfortably scored into the 9.9s for it.
The remaining places look to be filled by fulls, unless the new values finally get Hunter Price into the lineup for her handspring pike 1/2. She’s been borderline-lineup her whole career, so perhaps this will boost her into the group. Or perhaps not. The roster boasts more than enough options for fulls, so we’ll just have to see who is the stickiest and amplitudiest, who can get into the high 9.8s and challenge for 9.9s instead of staying stuck at 9.800. Ideally, you’d have Kanewa on vault because her full is the best of the rest. Healthy Kanewa would be a lock for the lineup, and I’d definitely take Jones for her power (she did a DTY back in the JO days) and Capps for the way she opens out of that full. The team will also have fulls from Kmieciak, Marks, Lehrmann and Lovan that could all realistically go, so depth isn’t an issue. The only issue would be getting stuck with too many vaults in the middish, lowish 9.8s (as many teams will because of the lowered values). Scaman and Jackson sticking for 9.950 is critical.
Bars
We don’t usually expect events to look sparse for Oklahoma, but this one does. Relatively. Because otherwise critical contributors like Capps and Lovan won’t be used on bars, there aren’t as many options. In fact, the Sooners return just four people who competed even a single bars routines last year. The rest are “well, I guess she could,” which will make the bars rotation in the opening meet against LSU the one to watch. Obviously, much depends upon Wofford. She is the most refined and impressive bars worker on the team and has developed into a pretty reliable 9.900-9.950. Without the luxury of a Dowell or Spears to help her out, she’s going to have to get at least 9.900 pretty much every week.
Scaman and Kmieciak will both also return to the lineup, and because of Oklahoma, they’re precise enough to hit 9.900 here and there. Though they’re also more susceptible to a 9.825. Bars has been a 49.500-level strength for a while now, which means everyone gets a 9.900, so to keep Oklahoma within sight of that lofty goal, Lehrmann and Marks need to become not just options but reliably significant scores. Both do have the skill set and surplus toe point to become exceptional bars workers and fit right into this lineup. Mark just joined the team recently, so we’ll see how long it takes to develop that routine, but bars was Lehrmann’s best event in JO, so look for her to get serious. The other returner is Ali Jackson, who can definitely be used and did score a couple 9.8s last year, though the toes and release amplitude aren’t quite at the level of a usual Oklahoma bars routine. Perhaps her stellar tuck full dismount will still get her in there. She’s definitely a possibility, as is Jones who competed bars for 9.8s in the past, though I’m rooting for Hemry to finally get a spot. She doesn’t have much difficulty and wouldn’t be a BAM 9.9, but she possesses beautiful qualities and has been patiently waiting in the corner for 9.9s to go away for years now to get her shot. It’s reasonable to expect a touch of score loss from last season without Dowell, Clark, and Brewer since people who couldn’t crack the lineup in 2015 now have to perform, but this roster still has more than enough oomph to make bars competitive as long as the freshmen do their parts. This is also Oklahoma, so Nicole Turner will suddenly start doing bars and get a 10.
Beam
The Sooners experience a similar level of routine loss on beam without Clark, Brewer, and Sorensen, but there are so many more 9.850+ options spilling out of the reserves bench that it seems foolish to be in any way concerned about Oklahoma and beam. Oklahoma’s identity is beam, and I could go into trying to explain why with aesthetic arguments, but the actual reason is that it’s just better. It’s better than the other teams. Oklahoma had a 49.530 RQS last year, which is insane for beam and can’t ever be the expectation, but this team is capable of challenging somewhere near that mark and continuing to star during a season of impressive beam potential all across the country.
Obviously, Chayse Capps’ beam routine is more important than anything you’ve ever done in your life, and now that she’s not doing the mid-routine poop squat anymore, I’m 100% on board. She’ll step one centimeter and get an automatic 9.9+, and Kara Lovan’s pristine legs have never heard of a deduction before, so she’ll get her share of 9.9s as well. Kmieciak has been the leadoff for forever and usually gets a 9.850 in that spot, though her routine is just as capable as most of the others of scoring 9.9. Everyone else in this lineup is going to be a new kid on the block, but there are plenty of kids. It’s like a sister-wife cult ranch of beamers, except not creepy. Now, the most beautiful and highest potential routine of the remaining crop comes from Wofford, but since I have given up expecting her to have the consistency to make this lineup, I’ll turn my attention instead to the freshmen. Lehrmann stood out in her JO career for giving away very little in built-in deductions, so I would be surprised if she doesn’t become a stalwart in this lineup. I’m also slightly obsessed with Alex Marks’ style and potential on beam, so keep an eye on her to become one of those sudden Oklahoma beamers. Then there’s Natalie Brown, who has lovely work, and Jones and Jackson who could get in, but let’s talk about Haley Scaman.
Scaman is in a knock-down, drag-out fight with Brandie Jay to see who can be the biggest three-event star who suddenly figures out beam in her senior year to become one of the nation’s top AAers. For Scaman, like Jay, it’s not an ability issue but a consistency issue, so we’ll see if she pulls it together. The team would be better for it because she has an extra level of splits and 9.9-potential (for a non-wobbleburger) than the other backups, but it hasn’t happened so far.
Floor
The reveal of the Oklahoma floor routines is now an anticipated event on par with the reveal of the UCLA floor routines, so I’ll take a moment to point out my feelings. Obviously, everyone will be losing their bacon about Chayse Capps, not just for the engaging choreography but also for the endurance feat it will be to commit to this routine and all the tumbling at the end of a competition. But I have to say I think I’m on the Ali Jackson train this year. Love it. Of course, they’re not all going to be hits (Jones’ routine is fairly dorky and the dreaded knocking-on-the-door mime has made a comeback in Lovan’s routine), but—and not to get overly Valorie on everyone—there’s enough thematic intent and commitment in the routines that I have an opinion about all of them, and that’s what makes routines like Oklahoma’s and UCLA’s memorable and worth discussing. (Blah, blah, blah, not exclusively, other schools, blah blah blah, before the letter bombs start.)
But let’s be clear, this lineup is the Haley Scaman show. She’ll contend for 10s and regularly go 9.950 again this season. The other sure bets for the lineup include Lovan, who has perfected the “I’m mounting with a rudi and still outscoring you, how’s your E pass?” routine, and Capps and Jackson. Both Capps and Jackson are capable of 9.9s but have at times struggled with landing control and received scores unbefitting their regal statuses. Capps is in the middle of an epic will-they-won’t-they with her mercurial DLO (Capps/DLO are like the Ross and Rachel of NCAA gym), and Jackson’s landings fell apart last postseason for 9.7 after 9.7 after 9.7. It was on floor that Oklahoma gave away the title last year with poor landings in spite of going 49.5s all season long, so keep an eye on how those critical passes develop.
Floor, among all the events, is also where a resurgent Jones will prove the most valuable this season, especially while sans Kanewa. Most of the other lineup options look to be in the pretty/low difficulty/twisty club (Brown, maybe Lehrmann and Marks), making Jones stand out even more with her very comfortable full-in. Hers has always been a potentially significant routine for the team, and in the absence of Dowell, she needs to jump into that role.
