Tag Archives: Regionals

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Regional Championship Headquarters

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Saturday marks what is simultaneously the most exciting and most unbearable day of the gymnastics year, regionals. Try to contain your weird sweating.

Because NCAA gymnastics is a short-sighted dinosaur that refuses to acknowledge the importance of catering to an online, non-school-specific audience, the schedule is even worse than usual this year. A new record! Why take advantage of the full audience for each meet when you can just slap them all together at the same time? “Yeah, having an audience is good, but you know what would be even better? Dividing it by six.”

As such, your mission is to commandeer all available and unavailable devices and get that new eye-splicing surgery, and you’ll still absolutely miss every important moment of every meet. In a futile attempt to counteract this phenomenon, HERE is this year’s combined rotation schedule for all six regionals so that you can prioritize your eye holes as necessary.

Yeah, thanks so much for that 5:30 ET/2:30 PT beam group. We wouldn’t have wanted to watch all of those rotations anyway (BO-RING), and we’re so glad we can’t.

Anyway, here is all the information you could ever possibly need for all six of Saturday’s regionals in one handy dandy place. Continue reading Regional Championship Headquarters →

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Washington Regional Preview

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It’s time to get rid of some people! Phew. None too soon. After enduring eleven weeks of not being allowed to care who wins and who loses because we’re all just one big happy family that’s learning life lessons together, we have finally entered the elimination round.

Elimination round. Add that to the list of names that would be better than “regionals.” Knockout stage. National quarterfinals. Potluck hoedown. The end of days. Of course, it’s not a true knockout stage because half the teams that advance will have lost their meets. But you know…progress?

Let’s begin the previews with the top-seed Oklahoma Sooners and their trip to the long-anticipated, inevitably contentious Washington regional.

April 1, 2017, 7:00 ET/4:00 PT

Teams (starting event)
[1] Oklahoma (bars)
[12] Kentucky (vault)
[13] Washington (bye before floor)
[24] Utah State (bye before bars)
[32] Stanford (beam)
[34] BYU (floor)

Individuals
Alexis Brown, UC Davis (AA)
Caitlin Soliwoda, Sacramento State (AA)
Lauren Rice, Sacramento State (AA)
Kaitlin Won, San Jose State (AA)
Ariana Harger, Seattle Pacific (VT, FX)
Julia Konner, Sacremanto State (VT)
Yonni Michovska, UC Davis (UB)
Rachel Heinl, San Jose State (UB)
Yasmine Yektaparast, UC Davis (BB)
Taylor Chan, San Jose St (BB, FX)

The favorite – Oklahoma
While we should still expect the Washington regional to fulfill the ancient prophesy of excitement and competitiveness when it comes to Washington and Kentucky (and…Stanford…?) competing for the second spot, Oklahoma will be about a point better than any other losers in this competition and should run away with it. It would take Oklahoma counting two falls to start getting interesting, but there are nonetheless aspects of Oklahoma’s performance that will be telling moving toward nationals.

Keep an eye on vault. That’s the one event where Oklahoma is not currently ranked #1, and it is a potential vulnerability in the title chase with LSU, a team with equivalent ability, one extra 10.0 start, and superior stickitude displayed over the last couple weeks. Oklahoma needs to begin getting sticks out of Dowell and Jackson more regularly because even a hop forward for 9.875-9.900 may mean losing ground at nationals. On the other hand, if Nichols, Dowell, and Jackson are all going 9.950, that minimizes or eliminates any advantage LSU might gain because of vault and would put less onus on OU’s bars to create a margin of victory. Things to keep in mind for next month.

It’s also imperative that Nichols get back to the AA for Oklahoma truly to be at title strength. The staff has been conservative with her on the leg events this month because of a sore knee, but clearly she showed no rust in her return to vault at Big 12s. You know, a 10, NBD. She’ll come back on floor at regionals, and similar lack of rust will need to be shown to give Oklahoma the full complement of competitive 9.9+ routines. Continue reading Washington Regional Preview →