Looking ahead to the 2025 season, one thing we have to take into consideration for the final time is the COVID-year cohort. In 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, the NCAA granted winter athletes an extra year of eligibility to try and accommodate the teams or individuals who opted out of the season. We saw gymnasts take their COVID year in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and now the 2021 season’s freshmen are deciding whether they will use their final year of eligibility or move on from the sport.
While there are many reasons beyond scores to take a fifth year, we wanted to dive into the data to see how the fifth-year athletes have contributed over the last three seasons. What types of scores have fifth years contributed? How have gymnasts who transferred for their fifth year fared? Has anyone peaked during their fifth year?
Who did we consider to be a fifth year?
To begin this analysis, we created a list of gymnasts who appeared as seniors on Road to Nationals rosters more than once, as well as gymnasts included in College Gym News’s 2022, 2023, and 2024 tracking articles as returning for a fifth year. One important caveat is that the Ivy League schools did not grant an additional year of eligibility, so any gymnast who competed at an Ivy and wanted to take advantage of this opportunity would be required to transfer.
In general, we flagged fifth-year seasons as gymnasts’ second senior season: If a gymnast was listed as a senior in both 2023 and 2024, we flagged 2024 as the fifth year. For gymnasts with three different senior seasons, we flagged their third senior season as their fifth year. Additionally, some gymnasts with a second senior season in 2024 may have a sixth year of eligibility remaining due to redshirt years – we flagged their second senior season as a fifth year for this analysis. Lastly, because this analysis looks at National Qualifying Scores (NQS) on each event, not all fifth-year gymnasts are included in the charts below.
Fifth-Year Score Contributions
Throughout this analysis, we use NQS to measure fifth-year performance. NQS requires a gymnast to compete six times during the season and to make lineups consistently. In total across all four events, we found that 76% of gymnasts with an NQS on an event in their senior season also earned an NQS on that event in their fifth year. Additionally, 15% of fifth-year NQS were earned by gymnasts who did not achieve an NQS on that event in their senior season.
Next, we looked at the annual average NQS on each event to see if fifth years in 2022, 2023, and 2024 contributed differently. In 2022, fifth-year gymnasts on athletic scholarships did not count towards their school’s scholarship limit. In 2023, 2024, and 2025 a school could offer an athletic scholarship to athletes taking the extra year but that scholarship would count towards the school’s limit. An athlete could decide to take the extra year while paying for school through other means.
We found that scores in all three years were very close together and average NQS didn’t deviate more than .060 across years on any event. Bars and beam both had one season where average NQS crept up a bit higher than in the other two years. Bars was bolstered in 2023 by Trinity Thomas’s 9.975 NQS and Natalie Wojcik’s 9.955. Likewise, beam was buoyed by five gymnasts with an NQS of 9.95 – Ragan Smith (9.995), Maile O’Keefe (9.99), Abby Paulson (9.955), Chloe Widner (9.95), and Sienna Schreiber (9.95). Scores in 2022, when scholarship athletes could continue without counting against school scholarship limits, were not out of range with 2023 and 2024 scores.
To see how fifth-year transfers scored on their new teams, we calculated the average NQS for transfers and non-transfers. On bars and beam, transfers outscored non-transfers slightly. The opposite was true on floor, and vault average NQS were nearly identical. Norah Flatley was the only fifth-year transfer with an NQS on all four events.
Next, we grouped fifth-year NQS into five ranges and calculated the percent of NQS that fell into each range. There were slightly more than 100 NQS scores on each event included in this analysis.
By this measure, scores on floor trended higher than on other events, with 40% of fifth years earning a 9.90 or better. Raena Worley’s 9.99 floor NQS was the highest of all fifth years. On beam and bars, about one out of four fifth years had an NQS of 9.90 or better. Vault had just one NQS at or above 9.95 (Ona Loper in 2022). Fifty-eight percent of vault scores fell into the 9.80 to 9.89 range.
Lastly, we wanted to see how many fifth-year gymnasts achieved the highest NQS of their career during this bonus season. On each event, it was most common for gymnasts who took a fifth year to have earned their highest NQS in their fourth season. This senior-season peak could be a major factor in deciding to take a fifth year. Continuing the late-peak trend, more than a quarter of fifth years achieved their highest bars, beam, or floor NQS during their fifth season. This shows that peak performance can absolutely come later in a gymnast’s career.
All in all, many fifth-year gymnasts improved their gymnastics and continued to contribute big scores. On each event, over 100 fifth-year gymnasts competed consistently enough to earn an NQS. As we’ve seen in elite gymnastics, and across women’s sports more generally, when there are opportunities to continue the sport at a high level, athletes rise to the occasion and continue to find success. Fifth-year and transfer-portal announcements for the 2025 season have started rolling in, and we’re looking forward to seeing their impact next year.
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Article by Jill Walsh and Emma Hammerstrom
The 100 gymnasts who contributed in 5th year spots likely equals the number of underclassmen who did not make lineups and gain experience. I would be very curious to see how much underclassmen in lineups dropped in the last 4 years.