With our fourth round of recruit ratings officially out in the world, we wanted to sit down to discuss some of our thoughts about the process, recruits, and changes from this year’s release. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the new class of 2024 ratings or the first ratings for the class of 2025—or have questions about the process—head over to the landing page.
Let’s start with the class of 2024. Which recruits stood out to you the most?
Katherine: I was really impressed by newly minted five-star Amy Doyle. She’s tidy and crisp on all four events, but in the vein of her future teammate Skyla Schulte (a former five-star herself), Doyle’s beam and floor are especially great. To no one’s surprise, Michigan State continues its yearly haul of clutch five-star recruits.
Emily M: I was really impressed with Haylee Hardin. She has had the attention of some of our staff for a while now, but I had somehow missed that train. When I rated her this year, it all clicked. She has a knack for landings, and a truly excellent double pike on floor, which is a rarity. She’s going to be excellent at Iowa State.
Emily L: I was super impressed by Ryan Fuller, and I especially loved watching her on floor. She doesn’t have the highest difficulty, but her execution on both her tumbling and her leaps were enough to make me excited to see her at Alabama. Fuller’s form and landings already look college-ready, so I’m excited to see her in the Crimson Tide’s lineup when the time finally comes!
Elizabeth: This is almost a cop-out answer, but Sydney Barros really impressed me at Pan Ams, which is primarily what we used to rerate her this cycle. She has cleaned up a lot and looks poised to be an absolute star in college, once her elite aspirations are finished or at least settled enough for her to make it to Westwood.
Tara: Amy Doyle was one of the first gymnasts I rated this year, and I immediately knew she was a catch for Michigan State. Her promotion to five stars is definitely deserved! I was also impressed by recent Minnesota commit McCauley Harrington, an unrated recruit last year that is now four stars.
Mariah: Kailin Chio made an impressive jump this year. Although she was already a five-star recruit, transitioning back to level 10 in 2023 helped her tremendously, and now she’s one of the top athletes in her class. LSU will be counting down the days until she shows up in Baton Rouge.
Rebecca: Nobody’s said Avery Neff yet, probably because they think it’s too obvious, but she’s just a machine. We’ve never given anyone a point total like 98 before, but with maximum score points on every event and routines that could anchor Utah lineups tomorrow, what is there to deduct?
While we didn’t rerate the class of 2023 as a whole due to bandwidth, but who would you have liked to see rerated due to having a stellar senior season?
Emily M: Olivia Coppola! The Illinois commit had a breakout year, besting her career highs everywhere except floor where she already owned a 9.950. She definitely had a shot at moving from four- to five-star status.
Emily L: I would’ve loved to rerate Towson commit Retoshia Halsell. This year she unveiled a Yurchenko one and a half that looks ready for just about any college lineup. Halsell scored a 9.925 on vault at level 10 nationals and didn’t score lower than a 9.550 all season. She also gained some consistency in her floor scores after a few lower scores and scratches in 2022. I think she definitely could’ve moved up to four stars this year.
Tara: Southern Utah commit Brinlee Christensen had a great final level 10 season, setting career highs on nearly every event and even scoring a 10 on vault. She only went below a 38 three times this season and had a good chance at moving up to four stars.
Mariah: I think Creslyn Brose may have gotten a ratings bump had she been rerated this year. She’s always been exceptional on floor, but her scores on the other three events improved a lot in 2023. Kentucky is coming off a record-breaking season, and I’m excited to see where Brose fits into the future of the program.
Jenna: Hannah Horton is unrated but would probably be four stars if we rated her this year, based on her level 10 scores during the rating window. I’d also like to point out a trio of Florida incoming freshmen: Anya Pilgrim, Skylar Draser, and Kaylee Bluffstone all likely would’ve been promoted to higher ratings as well.
Rebecca: Arizona’s Abigayle Martin was a real standout among the senior class this year, topping out at 39.175. Recruits like her don’t come around too often for the Wildcats.
For more on the class of 2023, check out our recent article, Underrated Class of 2023 Recruits That Had Stellar Senior Seasons.
This was the first time rating the class of 2025. Which recruits do you want to shout out from this class?
Katherine: WOGA has a really great group of up-and-coming elite gymnasts who I think will truly shine in college. Avery King and Ella Murphy have great technique and compete within their means. The same can be said for Ashlee Sullivan, but more than that, it feels like she has that extra performance quality that will make her an NCAA star.
Emily M: Every year there’s a junior recruit who I immediately start yelling about on Slack, screaming her name from the rooftops. This year that person was four-star Elyse Wenner. Her gymnastics is clean and precise, and she has solid fundamentals. She’s an NCAA star in the making and is proof that you don’t need E tumbling or a 10.0 vault to shine.
Emily L: I have always loved watching Mackenzie Estep. Her videos have been all over my Instagram explore page, and I’ve been very impressed with her difficulty and clean form. It’s nice to see that everyone agrees that she’s amazing!
Elizabeth: McKenzie Matters’ form and technique is *chef’s kiss.* I was actually surprised her overall ratings total was in the 60s, but that’s mostly due to inconsistency in her competition scores so far. I think with another year under her belt and more consistently high numbers, she has a real chance at five stars next cycle.
Tara: Beyond some of the gymnasts already mentioned, Haley Mustari is a star on bars. She notched a perfect 25 rating and is poised to stand out on bars, beam, and floor. Allison Cucci is also steady across all four events and will be an asset to whichever college team she ends up on.
Mariah: I’m a sucker for a great bar routine, so I have to shout out Paloma Spiridonova. She’s sure to be a fan favorite wherever she ends up. I also love Tiana Sumanasekera who, despite her lower elite scores on bars, has the potential to be stellar all-arounder in college.
Rebecca: Being from Seattle, I’ve had my eye on Mackenzie Estep for quite a while and was still somehow surprised by just how good she is.
Time for transparency. How was former CGN intern Sydney Seabrooks’ rating handled for fairness to her, CGN, and other recruits?
Emily M: The senior staff talked about this for a long time. I’ll let Rebecca dish out the details, but our thinking was: 1. We wanted to be fair to Sydney and not overcorrect, being too harsh while trying overly hard not to be biased; and 2. We wanted to uphold the integrity of our process. We always had a firewall between Sydney and our recruiting content and channels in Slack, but the hardest choice was deciding to remove her from Slack entirely with the conclusion of her internship. She becomes recruitable on June 15, and we want to avoid any conflicts of interest or anything that could harm her recruiting journey. Don’t worry, though! She’s still writing Recruiting Declassified throughout the rest of her process.
Rebecca: For level 10s, ratings consist of points calculated from scores and points assigned from watching videos. Score points are completely objective: They’re assigned based on percentiles among all level 10 scores in the country, so there’s no room for bias there. For her video points, we assigned raters who don’t have a personal relationship with her. And as Emily said, she’s had zero access or extra insight into the ratings process based on her status as an intern. I didn’t rate her, but I imagined her as a four-star recruit all year, so I think we ended up with an accurate result and I’m excited to see what she achieves in the upcoming year!
Who are you most looking forward to seeing commit and eventually compete in college in the class of 2025?
Katherine: I’ll mention another elite in Tiana Sumanasekera, whose recent all-around title at the Pan American championships made me even more excited for her college decision. She’s from California, but she’ll obviously have national interest.
Emily M: I have my eye on Paloma Spiridonova. She’s a sure-fire fan-favorite on bars, and whichever team snags her is bound to see improvement on that event.
Emily L: I’m excited to see where Allison Cucci ends up. I always love seeing a floor routine with high-flying tumbling and absolutely gorgeous leaps instead of one or the other, and that’s exactly what she has! She also has a stunning vault that is sure to improve just about any team’s lineup.
Elizabeth: Mackenzie Estep has had a LOT of gym visits from college coaches (allowed as long as the coaches don’t talk directly to her) recently—like nine a lot—which makes sense since she is going to be such a coveted recruit. However, it makes the battle for which college “wins” her commitment that much more exciting.
Tara: Estep and Nina Ballou have made names for themselves in the level 10 scene over the past few years and I’m excited to see where they end up. I mentioned Haley Mustari in a previous question, but I’m curious to see if she ends up with her hometown Sooners or branches out for college.
Mariah: I’m really curious to see where Kamila Pawlak ends up. She will be a huge star for any team! Her sister just transferred from Pitt to Alabama for next season, so it’s not unreasonable to assume Kamila may follow.
Mary Emma: I’m also going to go with Kamila Pawlak. It’s always fun to see where the top recruit of the class ends up, and this year is no different. I enjoyed following the speculation of where Avery Neff would end up last year after the ratings went out, so I’m hoping for a similar build-up with Pawlak.
Rebecca: I always find Canadians to be such wildcards—I never have a good guess in advance where they’re going to school. So I’ll be keeping a very close eye on Azaraya Ra-Akbar. Honorary mention to not-2025-but-still-uncommitted Aurélie Tran, who we rated for the first time and who is having the best year of her career.
We have four years of ratings under our belts now. What adjustments or improvements were made for this round? What are still some of the limitations you hope we can improve upon in future ratings—and why can’t we fix them now?
Emily M: We’re constantly refining the process. Jenna and Rebecca own the nitty-gritty and can go into detail, but the score points aspect was overhauled this year, and I think the changes it precipitated were good ones. As we know in gymnastics, scores aren’t everything! This was also the first ratings year in a few that the shortened COVID season didn’t complicate things.
Elizabeth: One minor thing we did when rerating the class of 2024 was combine point totals for both rating cycles, taking the higher total on each event from the two years. That way gymnasts that may have improved on a single event but perhaps dealt with injuries weren’t penalized for the injury or even had their total go down.
Mary Emma: One thing I would love to see in the future is star ratings for individual events for gymnasts that might not have quite reached the level on all four to be rated but have a standout event or two that deserve to be highlighted. We already do a good job with this with our series of articles for underrated recruits, but it would be cool to see it in a more official way. Right now, we’re always under a time crunch to finish the ratings before June 15th, so it’s hard to find the bandwidth to be able to add extra ratings, but that’s definitely something I would love to see in the future.
Jenna: The biggest change in terms of process this year was only to use the past two seasons’ scores and videos. This was our original intention when we first started doing the ratings, but due to multiple years of shortened seasons thanks to the pandemic, we kept the ratings window at three seasons up until now. This change allowed for some gymnasts to really jump in their score points since they were able to drop lower scores from 2020 and 2021. Other than that, the biggest change is what Elizabeth already mentioned, where we took the highest event total between last year and this year for the class of 2024; for example, if an athlete came out to a 16 on vault this year but had 18 points last year, we went with the 18 again. As for limitations, I really want to come up with a solution for rerating the senior class before they go off to college. We haven’t had the bandwidth to do it thus far, but maybe in the future we could do it on a separate timeline from the main ratings release.
Rebecca: As mentioned, the biggest change was combining ratings across years. Not reducing ratings year-over-year is something we’ve done since the beginning, for better or worse.
Finally, what do you hope the public takes away from or keeps in mind about this year’s release or the database in general?
Emily M: I’m so excited that the ratings have begun to be used in the way I always envisioned them: teams and local media using them to help make the confusing world of gymnastics more sensical to casual fans! I also enjoy that recruits use the ratings to do a little self-promotion. I love to see stars in Instagram bios; ultimately the ratings are meant to both help recruits advertise their successes to teams, as well as to help teams advertise signees. One thing I hope everyone understands is that while five-star ratings are meant to signify true excellence, four- and three-star ratings are also stellar. These are gymnasts who we believe will go on to see great success in college. Plus, there’s nothing we love more than seeing an unrated gymnast blossom in college and prove us wrong.
Elizabeth: Four stars is still really good! Five stars isn’t the end all be all, and a gymnast not being a five-star recruit doesn’t mean she’s “bad.” Five stars is for the best of the best, which is why there are so few out of all the rated recruits. Plus, there will always be folks that over or under perform their rating in college, and that’s OK! The rating system isn’t perfect, just like most gymnastics isn’t, and part of the fun is seeing gymnasts have “glow-ups” in college.
Tara: Ratings are a great tool, but they aren’t the end all be all! Emily M is spot on in regard to how teams and local media are grasping them and helping casual fans understand the sport. There’s also a lot of variables year to year, including video access and the unfortunate injury. We’re taking these gymnasts’ gymnastics at a moment in time, and there’s always room for improvement or for someone to prove us wrong in college.
Mariah: A lot can change in one year. Just within the class of 2024 more than 100 athletes saw an increase in their point totals. If your favorite recruit is unrated or “only” three or four stars right now (still something to be proud of!), just know there is so much time left for them to settle in and reach their full potential by the time they go to college, or in some cases, once they’re in college.
Mary Emma: We have spent years refining the process for ratings to get the most accurate picture that we can. These ratings are taken very seriously, and we spend lots of our free time tirelessly pouring over Instagram and YouTube videos to rate these gymnasts as best as we can. Is the system perfect? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean that when someone ends up lower or higher than you might expect that it’s somehow rigged. We try to be as fair and unbiased as we possibly can.
Jenna: Elites are much harder to project than level 10s because they’re generally performing much more difficulty than will be required in college. We can’t rely on scores for half the rating like we can with level 10s because elite scores are just on a completely different scale and therefore unusable by comparison. There are fewer elite meets as well, so that’s a small sample size to use for competition videos. We use a separate rubric entirely when rating elites’ videos, and we try to focus on the simpler skills that may be brought to college, but unfortunately it’s still really hard to make assumptions about what their gymnastics would be like with college-level routines, especially in terms of consistency. All this is to say that if your favorite elites didn’t receive the rating you expected, they’re still going to be highly sought after by top teams due to their incredible skill repertoire and high-pressure competition experience.
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Article by Katherine Weaver, Emily Minehart, Emily Lockard, Elizabeth Grimsley, Mariah Dawson, Tara Graeve, Mary Emma Brambilla, Jenna King, and Rebecca Scally
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