I’ll admit, college gymnastics is not the easiest sport to get behind for mainstream sports fans—or really anyone that wasn’t a former gymnast. But just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.
As any ball-sport fan will tell you, learning the rules of play beyond shooting the most baskets or scoring the most touchdowns is where the true enjoyment of the sport lies. Immersing yourself in the strategy, arguing with the referees about penalties and fouls, and yelling at your TV about who is benched and played each week is where die-hard fans truly thrive. And as a gymnastics fan, you don’t have to give any of that up! You just have to learn a new set of rules in a new field of play, and I’m here to help. The following are the top five things that I think every new (and returning) college gymnastics fan should know about how you “win” at gymnastics and the people who call the shots.
Gymnastics Is a Subjectively Judged Sport
When I was young, my uncle and I had an argument as to whether or not gymnastics was a “real” sport. I, a gymnast at the time, adamantly argued that it IS a sport because gymnasts are some of the most incredible athletes, there are winners and losers, and it’s in the Olympics. He argued that it’s not a sport because it requires a panel of judges to decide who wins and loses, rather than an objective measure like length, time, or crossing a goal line. Although I still believe it’s a sport, I appreciate the nuance of his argument that who’s the best isn’t as simple as who moves the fastest, jumps the highest, or scores the most points.
Gymnastics is an artistic sport, like figure skating or diving, where the way you perform your athleticism is subjectively evaluated based on an agreed-upon set of rules. These performances are evaluated by an expert panel of judges who are responsible for fairly choosing the winners.
In gymnastics, most of the deductions are based on composition (what’s in the routine), execution (how precisely was it performed), and—on events that include dance and choreography—artistry (your level of performance). This leaves room for interpretation and sometimes disagreement among judges, coaches, and athletes about who should be getting what scores and who are the “judges’ favorites.” Rather than strategizing about how to get past the defensive line, coaches and athletes find ways to “trick the judges” by hiding deductions or creating routines that play to each gymnast’s strengths while hiding their weaknesses. Part of the fun of being a college gymnastics fan is arguing about who was overscored, why a routine should or should not have been a 10, and what unforgivable mistakes the judges made this weekend. With that subjectivity comes the controversy and the drama, which is what can make it such a fun sport to follow.
NCAA Scoring Is Different Than Elite or Olympic Scoring
Ever since Nadia Comenci’s iconic routine at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, gymnastics has always been associated with chasing the elusive perfect 10. If you’ve watched an international gymnastics competition since 2006, you’ll know that they no longer have a perfect 10 scoring system. Judging is now open-ended, meaning gymnasts receive both a difficulty and an execution score, and their total is the sum of the two.
If you miss the perfect 10, college gymnastics is definitely for you! NCAA women’s gymnastics has not switched to open-ended scoring and still operates on a 10.0 maximum score system. NCAA gymnasts start at a 9.4 and must complete difficult skills and combinations, as well as some general routine requirements, in order to gain their maximum perfect 10 potential. That score is called a start value and is one of the jobs of the judges to calculate. From the start value, judges deduct points for errors in execution or artistry to come up with their score. The final score is the average of at least two judges’ scores. Most top teams stack their lineups with athletes that can consistently score a 9.8 or higher.
Perfect 10s Are Not Always Perfect
When judges are assigned to a particular event, they have one opportunity and only one angle for which to view the routine. Instant replay and video review are not tools available to judges when determining a routine’s score (however, video review can be used on rare occasions for scoring appeals).
Usually, this angle is perpendicular to the gymnast, and both judges usually have the same perspective, but on opposite sides. This means that execution errors like leg separation can be hard to see and deduct for as a judge when they may be clear as day to fans watching from home. It’s also difficult to watch the entire body at the same time, especially when the gymnast is very close to you. So where you as a fan might clearly see a small step forward, if the judge is looking at the body angle or arm position, they may miss the step in that moment. These examples help us remember that the judges, like the gymnasts they evaluate, are rarely perfect.
Judges Don’t Have as Much Power as You Think
To maintain a semblance of objectivity and fairness, judges are not only enforcing rules but also have a lot of rules they have to follow themselves. They can’t discuss routines with other judges, they can’t ask their judging partner for help, and they can’t always tell another judge to fix their score when it’s clearly wrong. Judges have no control over which events they judge or the competitions they judge, and while you as a fan may have been following Jordan Chiles’ bar routine all year, it may very well be the first time the judge has ever seen it, live or recorded.
While these rules are in place to allow the judges to score routines fairly and independently, there isn’t much that a judge can do if they sneeze at the wrong time or their partner is making mistakes that aren’t big enough to challenge. But unfortunately, they are big enough to matter in a sport where the difference between first and 10th place team totals are less than a point. So when you inevitably get upset over a score and wish the judges “would have done more to fix it,” there may not have actually been much they could have done.
Some Mistakes Are Worse Than Others, and They Aren’t Always Obvious
Besides arguing over the scores after the fact, another fun part of watching college gymnastics is trying to guess the score before the judges flash it. To do so, you need to know some basics.
The smallest deduction in gymnastics is a half-tenth, and the largest (for the most part) is a half-point, which is the deduction for a fall. Most NCAA judges take a half-tenth per execution error, with the exception of steps on landing (one-tenth each) and large wobbles on beam (usually one to two tenths). In reality, some execution errors range in deduction up to three tenths, so if you want to refine your skills a bit, you could consider taking a full tenth of a point for really bent knees, an arched double layout, or a pike down on a landing. However, the score is not just execution but also composition. If for some reason the athlete’s routine difficulty isn’t hard enough or they leave out a required skill, you may not notice from home as to why their score is much lower than you thought it would be.
The best way to become an arm-chair expert in NCAA gymnastics is to start watching! Pay attention to the commentary, the analysis, and the scores, and before you know it, you’ll be right on par with the judges in the chair.
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Article by Rhiannon Franck
Rhiannon Franck is a former national-rated NAWGJ women’s gymnastics judge with over 15 years of USAG judging experience and nine seasons judging NCAA gymnastics. Outside of gymnastics, Franck works at a university as a nursing professor and loves to travel.
