Tag Archives: Georgia

Season Preview

#9 Georgia Preview

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Roster
Arnold, Jasmine – Sophomore – N/A
Babalis, Vivi – Sophomore – BB, FX
Box, Mary Beth – Senior  – BB, FX
Bradford, Caroline – Freshman 
Broussard, Ashlyn – Junior – VT, BB, FX
Cherrey, Gracie – Freshman
Jay, Brandie – Senior – VT, UB, BB, FX
Johnson, Lauren – Junior – VT
Marino, Gigi – Sophomore – VT, FX
Reynolds, Morgan – Junior – VT, BB, FX (out with the NCAA’s annual bizarre hospitalization)
Roberts, Beth – Junior – backup on VT, BB, FX
Rogers, Brittany – Senior – VT, UB, BB, FX
Sanders, Hayley – Sophomore – UB
Schick, Rachel – Junior – UB, BB (possible VT)
Snead, Sydney – Freshman
Vaculik, Natalie – Sophomore – VT, UB, BB (possible FX)

Recent History
2015 – 9th
2014 – 5th
2013 – 6th
2012 – 11th
2011 – 10th
2010 – 13th

2016 Outlook
Georgia took a step back last season by being so distraught at the lack of Lindsey Cheek on the team that no one could emotionally handle hitting a beam routine anymore, but this year should be better. The sheer number of returning routines is cause for encouragement because Georgia will have options to work with, especially on beam, and won’t get trapped into using iffy routines the way some of these other 6th-12th schools will. The Gymdogs should be a 197 RQS team and will expect to better this preseason ranking (another year of 9th would be a disappointment). This is the last year of Jay and Rogers, so this is the time to do something. It will be much, much harder next season. Super Six is a pretty realistic hope for this group, and anything less would be a missed opportunity that may not come back around for a while.   

Key Competitor
Brittany Rogers, obviously. Rogers is trying to do the borderline impossible, go straight from NCAA to elite, then back to NCAA, then back to elite, while still remaining a living person by the end of it. It’s a grueling schedule, but keeping her healthy is missions A, B, C, D, E, and G. (Mission F is stop fucking up beam—such language!) Georgia will need Rogers fully intact to make those Super Six hopes happen, especially after losing so much on bars. She’s the remaining diamond. While Rogers has been big on vault and bars throughout her NCAA career, beam isn’t always so much with the good, so let’s hope she also turned a corner by hitting twice at worlds. She’s too good there not to be the best one. No more 9.700s, OK? Rogers needs to be a three-event 9.9er in her final season to join Jay as part of a formidable scoring foundation, and I’m still holding out for a hero on floor as well. 

Vault

Making up lineups is so much easier with full intrasquad videos!

This is the most important event for Georgia in 2016. It needs to be such a big score that it punches us in the face. Georgia has been a good vault team throughout the Durante era (although last year the vault RQS was actually lower than the floor RQS, which…what?), but difficulty should make the Gymdogs an excellent vault team this year, at least top 5 and possibly top 3. Main reason: the Jay and Rogers 1.5 duo. While all teams will be looking at slightly withered vault scores this season, the business end of Georgia’s lineup retains the same scoring potential and can still do the 9.900-9.950 double, a dying species. Gigi Marino also has the 1.5, but her landing is more questionable, so it won’t be quite the same kind of asset. Her vault will still be useful but won’t necessarily outscore the better yfulls the way Jay’s and Rogers’ vaults can.

A fourth 10.0 SV vault should come from Sydney Snead, who had an excellent 1.5 in JO. She’s coming back from injury and showed only a full in the video above, but she clearly has the height and power to do a 1.5, made evident by bouncing across several state lines out of that full. Ideally she’ll be working back up to that vault, which would give Georgia a significant start-value advantage over even Florida and Oklahoma, allowing leeway for some iffy landings.

As with every team, the Gymdogs will also be putting up some fulls. I like Broussard for one of those spots, and there will be a solid contingent of options for the final opening. Of note, Lauren Johnson of “remember that time I had basically never vaulted before and then won the SEC Championship?” fame is back. And where did that vault from Rachel Schick come from? I guess someone is healthy again, though she may lack the distance to get big scores from it. Regardless, this should be a 49.4 event for Georgia.

Bars

Along with vault, we’ve all become accustomed to bars being a big, reliable score for Georgia, but that may not be the case this season. Expect noticeable regression in the bars score, tenths that they’ll need to make up with improvements on beam. Brittany Rogers is now the only remaining member of the powerhouse bars quartet, and she should stalder her way to 9.900s and 9.950s every week once again. After that, this lineup doesn’t have a ton of 9.9s, making it look like more of a 49.200 this year than the 49.4s we have come to expect. I believe Brandie Jay is singlehandedly trying to make up for this by throwing all the difficulty ever, including her shushunova and a DLO 1/1 dismount. We’ll see how advisable that ends up being and watch for when that DLO 1/1 becomes a DLO for sticking reasons, but the girl is going for it. She should be able to extract herself from leadoff 9.825 purgatory to be a more significant part of the lineup this season since she’s now the team’s second-best bars worker. 

Rachel Schick and Natalie Vaculik were both in the lineup last year (and in spite of my hunger strike for a Vaculik gienger, it didn’t happen), getting too many 9.800s for their ability levels. But at this point, I don’t really see anyone knocking them out of those positions, so they’ll just need to stop with the not sticking. Simple task. Snead impressed enough in the intrasquad to seem a logical option, and I still think it’ll be important to get Cherrey into the lineup at some point even though that dismount is not currently usable. That’s why I’m a little worried about bars this year. The early scores may need some therapy, and I’m already anticipating having to live blog “Brittany Rogers coming up in the anchor spot, needs a 12.” Hayley Sanders really should be a bars worker for (and you can absolutely see the talent there), but they’ve got to work out the body angle on that bail and the landing on that double front. If they do, she’s someone who could score quite well and be solidly mid-lineup.

Beam

Beam looks like it will be much less scary this year than it has been recently. Phew. But famous last words. Still, when looking at this roster, it’s suddenly more about who gets left out of the lineup rather than who gets shoved in at the last minute to get a 9.725. Georgia will have the luxury of leaving out inconsistent workers. Mary Beth Box is the most confident and reassuring presence in the lineup and should jump into the 9.9s here and there once again this season. I’ve covered Rogers on beam already, and how her world-class execution is sometimes compromised by brain problems, but the 9.9s are there to be had for her as well. Ashlyn Broussard has been a ball of potential on beam ever since she started at Georgia, but she has finally worked it out and should be solidly late-lineup as well. Those three look like givens, but GASP, there are quite a few options for the other spots.

Apparently, Brandie Jay has already planted a flag on being this year’s senior three-event star who suddenly figures out how to do beam. There’s one every season. Dabritz took the title last year, and now she has bequeathed it to Jay. Jay has always possessed the ability to be a good beamer, but perhaps the hour has finally come for her. The team could certainly still use it, but where was all this routine during the dark ages of seven falls in six routines? Beamy come lately. She’ll actually have some competition to make the lineup, though. Gracie Cherrey and her laser hips certainly send a message in that video for a routine that also stands out by making the switch+switch combo look not horrific. She appears a very viable choice, as does Rachel Schick with her pretty dance elements and relatively deduction-free work. Those two may well jump in and be the Vaculik/Babalis of this season. (Speaking of Babalis, where are you, girl? We need you.)

I also need Natalie Vaculik’s beam routine in my life because it can be so gorgeous, but she lost her spot last year out of inconsistency and may just get bumped out of the lineup yet again if she continues working beam like an Antarctic explorer who just found out that help is not actually on the way. Many of the other routines in the video don’t necessarily look like they’ll be lineup routines, though Snead does show a partial routine with potential and there are multiple viable 7th and 8th routines cropping up. Options! Actual options! Also, even though I don’t think we’ll see a moment of Gigi Marino on beam this year, it’s worth watching for her dismount.

Floor

Though I’m optimistic about beam, floor is still a problem, and I can foresee a few more end-of-meet letdowns this year with a somewhat anemic floor score. The coaching staff will have to work out the issues with routine endurance, which really hurt the lineup at the beginning of last season, as well as when/whether to introduce difficulty. I hope they don’t get blinded too much by the cult of the E pass, since a double pike with comfortable landings is always going to score better than a cowboyed E skill with an uncertain outcome, and a lack of floor difficulty can be overcome with smart lineup construction. It will be interesting to watch whether they try to make Mary Beth Box’s double front a thing and risk it for the difficulty or settle for her ONLY 9.875s FOR YOU double pike routine. Right now, I’m team double pike because of the heavy cowboy in that double front, but we’ll see.

For Ashlyn Broussard, girl needs to get into the floor lineup. Remember when she was starting at Georgia and we were like, “SHE’S A FLOOR SPECIALIST. THAT DLO.” While other E passes may not always be the right call, that DLO remains far too competent for her to leave it out of the routine or be incapable of hitting it in a meet. The team needs that routine to be in working order, but the problem is that Georgia does not have much room for experimentation. There are just not enough high-scoring floor options to be able to afford people botching new E passes, or for that matter, Brandie Jay’s annual three awkward full-out landings. Jay needs to be getting a 9.9 every time, and Box needs to be getting her 9.875s, even if its with a double pike routine.

Marino should be back to the lineup as well, and while Snead still isn’t showing full floor difficulty as she comes back, she’ll be a very appealing option in time. What else is there? I’m not quite convinced by any of the other routines if Babalis is out (there are some fine backup double pikes in there but nothing remarkable), so let’s hope Rogers is, in fact, able to be an AAer this season to shore up what could become an OK lineup in the right circumstances, if a little tenuous. It’s still always going to be on the verge of becoming a 9.850 fest for 49.2s, but if they develop just one other consistent 9.9, this could be a relatively formidable lineup, or at least not a weakness. Here’s looking at you, Snead.

Season Preview

Freshman Notes: LSU, Georgia, Nebraska

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On to the next set of hopeful young freshmen! We’ve got several volumes of Lexie Priessman injury history to get through, so let’s get going.

LSU

It won’t be an easy little stroll through the meadow for LSU this year. Every possible gymnast in the universe graduated after last season, so now it’s just Jay Clark and one grip sitting there writing poems about loneliness. The problem is actually not so much the number of lost routines (there’s still a solid core) as the value of those routines. Seven of the eight 5th-6th routines from last year are gone, which means a hefty little number of 9.9s will need to be sculpted from somewhere TBD that may or may not exist. The good news is that this year’s freshman class is wildly talented.

Let’s start by addressing Lexie Priessman. It’s hard to believe she’s just now starting college because even when she was a junior elite she already looked like she had just moved to New York to get a job in PR, while all the other girls were like, “I’m four.”

We all know what a healthy Lexie Priessman would be capable of, at least if we can remember back that far or if “healthy Lexie Priessman” is still a possible theoretical state of matter. She could be an absolute ridiculous star on vault and floor, and also everywhere because Lexie Priessman. I’m pretty interested to see what she ends up putting together on bars and beam (fingers crossed) because as an elite, her form could get pretty ragged on those events, becoming more pronounced as time went on. That seemed to be primarily a function of pushing the D-score via skills that weren’t actually great ideas for her, but we’ll have to see if an NCAA routine is indeed a much cleaner prospect. 

Of course, the only real question heading into Priessman’s NCAA career is what shape she’s in. And I don’t mean shape like fitness. I mean what actual geometric shape she is. Triangle? Rhombus? Pentagram? Having endured years of the emotional and physical turmoil of OCD Sunday School, we can never really be sure. The mystery deepens. Priessman has been in various states of extreme leg-disappearedness for the last, oh, 600 months, ever since MLT put that hex on her where every time she does a skill, her body breaks into a thousand pieces. Her level of MLT-breaks will be the deciding factor as to where she ends up on the huge-star/injury-retirement scale. Can she get back to full strength? At some point?

Keeping on the topic of relatively unknown quantities post-2012, remember how obsessed you were with Sarah Finnegan for 11 minutes? Well, she’s back. It’s really exciting. We hope. The trouble is that we haven’t seen any real gymnastics from her since the late 1950s. Is she healthy? Is she doing all the events? Is she a tatted-up truck driver now? We have no way of knowing. Finnegan was excellent all-around during her shooting-star elite career, though I have to think bars and beam will be her key events (especially post-Courville and Jordan, and post-that thing where she competed gymnastics). Both those lineups need 500ccs of undiluted Finnegan, stat. (That’s her doing a lovely DLO off bars in the training video above, right? I have a lot of ID problems…) In case you also need a refresher about Finnegan’s heavenly beam routine, this is important viewing, mostly because there’s some priceless Elfi and Tim at the beginning about her really unique wolf turn. It’s an excellent lesson in what it sounds like when Tim is 100% done with your life.

Finnegan and Priessman are intended as the replacement stars for our dearly departed favorites, but because of their injuries/lack of competition in the past eon, LSU will have to lean pretty heavily on the rest of this class to be sturdy workhorses and fill in many of these lineup gaps.

The very best thing about McKenna Lou Kelley entering NCAA is that we finally get to stop going, “Wait, are you even an elite? Then why are you at Marthaville every day?” Humanity must collectively and immediately stop trying to make MARY LOU’S DAUGHTER AHHHH happen, so it’s already better. 

McKenna Lou is a powermansion on floor. She has a totally casual DLO and will need to become a major force in replacing those lost late-lineup floor scores. Now we just need to teach her a seat drop. It’ll go fine. Also, sometimes Mary Lou has 18 pulmonary spasms of motherhood during her routine.

Kelley vaults a full, but it’s a pretty big full that should be something usable for the team in spite of the scoring downgrade. It can complement the returning 10.0 SV vaults from Gnat, Savona, and Ewing. Bars and beam are more of a question. She brings that same power to her acro skills on beam, but the dance elements can be a little underbaked, and on bars the current state of her leg form and handstands may hold her back in spite of her skill set.

The sleeper in this class is going to be Julianna Cannamela. She really stands out in the above training video (she’s the redhead), and not just because it’s easy to identify which one she is. But mostly. The individual skills she shows in that video look stronger than they did in the JO routines I’ve seen (especially that pretty good floor DLO and usable full on vault), and that’s always a good sign. Cannamela was consistently acceptable across four events as a JO gymnast, which is somewhat rare. She seems like the type who could give you a 9.850 on any event when called upon, which given the injury histories here, will be essential. 

There isn’t much extra baggage in this freshman class. It’s big, but all five gymnasts should be contributors. Kaitlyn Szafranski was among that gaggle of Parkettes who tried junior elite a million years ago, and the LSU coaches seem to be high on her bars potential. That’s understandable since she does have a serious Ray going on, but the routine isn’t all the way there. Her JO work exposes some form issues, especially with leg breaks and piking in the DLO, but I expect it to be one of those Jay Clark projects. It will especially necessary because LSU looks relatively devoid of true bars women this season, again having to rely on a few people who can do the event but don’t love it (the Gnats, the Savonas, etc…)

GEORGIA

Thank you for the IDs, Emily!

Georgia is in quite a different position from LSU, retaining the large majority of important routines from last season (so, Jay and Rogers). It’s mostly bars where the Gymdogs will need to restock, with Chelsea Davis gone and Kiera Brown having been…quietly removed. Beam could also use some new big scores after last year’s 9.825-a-thon (which is slightly worrying because this freshman class doesn’t particularly love life, and by life I mean dance elements, on beam.)

Expect Gracie Cherrey to be a significant part of the bars project with her big Ray and useful bail. She’ll need to turn those pieces into a realistic mid-late-lineup option to support what will obviously be constant and automatic 10.000s for Her Ladyship. The main concern I have right now for Cherrey’s bars routine is the crazy legs on the DLO. They’re a little EHH and could compromise her score depending on whether the judges choose to notice that or just give her the full Alaina Johnson treatment. What’s a leg separation? Cherrey is also working a full-in on floor, and has received solid scores for her double-back routines in JO. It will be interesting to watch that progress since Georgia had a somewhat icy relationship with E passes last season, pushing to get them into the routines around mid-season but not performing them cleanly enough to be worth it. Will they make a point of forcing those passes into routines earlier this season? Or just go for clean D elements?

One person who will be expected to bring the power and difficulty is Sydney Snead, the first Dr. Seuss character to join a D1 NCAA gymnastics program. She has a stellar 1.5 on vault, and if you put her along with the three returning 1.5s, Georgia is among the programs best positioned to take advantage of the new vault values. Snead also shows a piked full-in on floor that she has been performing regularly as a JO gymnast, which should be useful in stepping up the difficulty. While she’s primarily known as a vault and floor gymnast, her bars are actually pretty good. She has some toe point going on, at least, so I’m sold, even if there are breaks here and there. Originally, I had her in my head as a two-eventer, but I could envision more for her at some point.

Caroline Bradford is the late addition to round out the roster and the least likely of the three to make a splash, but as seen in the training video, she’s got some line on bars and that front on beam looks good. She was a solid finisher in JO back in the junior days, but then disappeared for a thousand centuries (presumably injuries) until this season, so we’ll have to see what she has been able to regain.

NEBRASKA
A cursory look at the Nebraska roster for this year reveals that it’s…um…tiny. That’s nothing new. This is Nebraska. But now that Kamerin Moore and Ariel Martin have disappeared into the sands of time with Implied Injury Retirement Syndrome, the Huskers return just five regularly competing gymnasts (and just three floor workers from last year), meaning that by mathematical necessity, this year’s six freshmen have some work to do. Even though I would normally characterize this year’s new class as supporting players/spot contributors with an emphasis on bars, they’ll have to do more than that and compete on some events we wouldn’t normally expect them to do. Also don’t be surprised if this becomes another one of those 6 competitor, everyone does the all-around, seasons.

Sienna Crouse seems the most likely to contribute significantly. On bars she has a big, giant, humongous gienger and laudable amplitude in all her release elements, even if there’s some form to be worked out. I’m looking forward to that routine. She also has a front double full on floor with generally clean twisting overall, making her the only Nebraska freshman (as far as I know) coming in with an E pass. Given the need for floor workers to fill out that lineup and help Lambert and Blanske, that’s a thing. Her full on vault is a little touch-and-go. Sometimes it can be pretty low, but this is also Nebraska and they make a lot vaults. 

The big vault in this class, however, comes from Megan Schweihofer. Her yfull is a Nebraska yfull and the girl can land it. She should figure in that lineup and hopefully on beam as well. She’s got something there, even if there’s a hint of leggishness going on. That full turn. I’d like to see her in that lineup. In the great search for floor routines, she has your normal double pike and double tuck, so that’s there if necessary.

Kami Shows is a case worth watching because I think she would have been a bigger deal coming in had she not torn her Achilles in 2014. It’s unclear what gymnast we’ll see at this point because while she used to have some solid height in her floor tumbling back in the day, she hasn’t done floor since 2013. In her comeback meets in 2015, she did only bars and beam. On bars, she has a shap and a pretty high tkatchev, so that will be a routine to keep tabs on. Catelyn Orel comes from GAGE, and I’m not really sure what we’re going to see from her. She never had the big JO career and didn’t compete in the major meets to give us a good scoring/ranking comparison, but she has your overall NCAA skill set: a pretty clean yhalf on vault, gienger and tkatchev on bars, double pike on floor, and some moments of general GAGEity in all of that, along with some form concerns like split positions on beam.  

The rest of the class comes from Gym-Max, with Kelli Chung and Megan Kuo jumping in late to try to round out the roster. Chung has some good Gym-Max toes on bars and nice splits and leg form on beam, but they shouldn’t be significant contributors.

In other news, am I being dense, or do we not get embed code for gymnastike videos anymore now that they decided gymnastike was an OK name, but just didn’t remind people of periods quite enough?