For gymnasts transitioning from level 10 to NCAA gymnastics can be a daunting shift. Gone are the smaller, quieter meets held in corporate conference centers, replaced by the electric atmosphere of college arenas often packed with near sell-out crowds. But even for elite athletes, who are more used to the noise and the spectacle, the jump can be equally difficult. Competing for individual success is replaced by the pressure of competing as part of a team, and constructing routines that will contribute to the collective success of the team, week after week is a key challenge in this transition. Coaches, athletes, and teams must balance individual talents with team strategy, creating routines that both maximize a gymnast’s strengths and meet the technical demands of collegiate competition.
“Coming in, it’s super nerve-wracking,” admited Faith Torrez, a standout gymnast at the University of Oklahoma, “I always stayed in really great contact (with my college coaches), and throughout that summer where I was about to come in, I always kind of asked what they thought for routines,” said Torrez.
For many coaches the process of constructing college routines begins long before the freshmen set foot on campus. Associate head coach Lou Ball, who enters his 19th year with Oklahoma this season, explained, “You are framing an idea of what you might want (them) to do from the time you start recruiting them all the way till they get to campus.”
The goal is to showcase each gymnast’s best skills while minimizing deductions. “We try not to dumb down the gymnastics for college,” he said, admitting that they have a list of skills that they want from their athletes. “We always are wanting a single bar release, we want an E level dismount or a combination into an E level dismount,” said Ball. But ultimately, “What ends up in the routine is what they can do at the highest level with the least amount of execution deductions,” he confirmed.
The single bar release on bars is a skill that sets Oklahoma’s gymnasts apart from many other top programs. Every routine, bar one, in the lineup in the 2024 post-season had a single bar release and the Sooners finished the season ranked No. 1 on the event. Fifth-year Oklahoma senior Jordan Bowers said, “We try to have as many different routines as possible; it’s really just you work with your coach, and you figure out what’s going to work best for you.”
The Sooners also have a lot of diversity of skills in their bar routines- a strategy coach Ball said is deliberate. He gave the example of two identical routines in terms of skills, but with very different execution that might affect the overall team score. “Sometimes if you have two identical routines, and one person does it much better than the other,” said Ball. “So there is some strategy in who you put out there, when you put them out there, and what order you put them out there,” he explained. Additionally, “It’s a spectator sport,” Ball added. “I think it’s nice for the crowds to see different routines.” This approach allows Oklahoma to tailor performances to each athlete’s strengths. “We ask the athletes what they feel most comfortable doing and what they believe they can do at the highest level,” Ball said.
Bowers was open to learning new skills when she came to college at Oklahoma her level 10 routine was a Maloney-Pak routine, but in her freshman year, she learned and competed a Ray on bars that wasn’t in her skill set before she came to Norman. Unfortunately,it exacerbated some of her back issues, so she switched it back to a Jaeger the following season, upgrading from a straddle in her sophomore year to a pike in her junior year.
Even though both Bowers and Torrez have competed elite and level 10, the constant drive for improvement keeps routines from becoming stale. “I never get bored with my college routines because I am always trying to improve,” Bowers added.
Torrez, who had also never performed a Ray before joining the Sooners, now includes the skill consistently in her routine. “Getting a different perspective from new coaches is really helpful when learning new skills,” she said. “Everyone sees something different, and their input has been invaluable.” She praised her coaches’ hands-on approach, adding, “Their coaching really helped me out. They were very involved in the process.”
At Florida, associate coach Owen Field said they keep track of recruits, having regular contact in their senior year of high school. “But for the most part we don’t really get super in depth about routine construction until they get to campus,” he said. “In recent years this has been trending to be in the second half of the summer.” So there’s plenty of time in open practice to see what skills look good.
Amelia Disidore, a current elite who will join the Gators for the 2026 season is looking forward to the transition. ”We’ve not talked much about the skills they want me to have, but I’m just keeping everything up so I know they’ll have a lot of skills to work with,” she said.
For Field having his athletes be comfortable and confident with their routines is very important to him. “A question that I’ll ask sometimes, is if you got pulled out of your dorm room at two o’clock in the morning, and you had to do a routine after one warm-up, what would what would you compete?” said Field. “Because I think if you have confidence in the construction of the routine, it allows you more time to be able to focus on the details which is so important.”
Communication between athletes and staff was one of the things that drew Disidore to Florida in the first place. “I liked how the coaching staff was very communicative with each other. They were all very goal oriented, but they still knew how to have fun,” she said. Communication will always be key when it comes to balancing athletes with international elite ambitions as well as competing in NCAA, something Florida has come to be very familiar with.
Anya Pilgrim, a sophomore at Florida, had a stellar freshman season, earning five SEC Freshman of the Week honors and establishing herself as Florida’s MVP on vault and in the all-around. Pilgrim, who continues to compete as an elite gymnast for Barbados, balances both roles adeptly. While her “main focus is competing for the University of Florida,” she said she transfers whatever skills she can from her collegiate routines into her elite ones.
Disidore is hoping to earn an international assignment from her participation in the 2025 Winter Cup which takes place in February and plans to join the team at Florida in the fall, training elite there instead of her home club GAGE. With plans to try for world championships in October 2025, she’s treading a similar path to Pilgrim in her first season with the Gators.
Reflecting on the start of her freshman year, Pilgrim recalls the effort she put in over the summer to maintain her skillset. “For level 10 and college, the skills are pretty similar, so it wasn’t too much of a difference for me,” she said. She entered college with a lot of flexibility. “Because I have maybe three different bar routines that I could pull out at any point, but I had decided with my coaches to do the easier routine because that was going to be what was best for the lineup at the time,” said Pilgrim. This season, Pilgrim plans to upgrade her bars routine by competing a Maloney half instead of the simpler Maloney-Pak combination.
Field shared insights into how Pilgrim’s routines were decided. He explained that her international experience, confidence, and comfort in certain skills played significant roles in deciding on the routine she would ultimately compete. The Maloney-Pak routine was initially chosen because it reduced stress while maximizing consistency. He said he wanted her to feel that she could say, “10 times out of 10, I’m gonna get up and hit this routine and not have to stress about it.” However, he’s optimistic about her upgraded routine. “She learned a Maloney half this summer, and she is doing a really good job with that. I think it’s just going to provide a little bit more of a wow factor than her routine last year,” said Field.
Pilgrim competed at the Pan American championships during the fall, which affected her training schedule. “The shift forced us to do things a little bit differently,” Field said. But Florida has experience in dealing with this as they have a roster packed full of former elite athletes and alumnae Trinity Thomas and senior Leanne Wong both competed elite and NCAA simultaneously. This definitely plays into the routine construction. Field said, “If you can have your NCAA routine be like either a half routine or a warm up turn for your elite routine it makes a lot of sense just from an efficiency standpoint with your training.”
Florida, who reached the national finals last season, has an approach to their bars lineup, which offers a contrast to programs like Oklahoma. The Gators only featured one single-bar release move in their postseason lineups. “‘The way the rules are right now, a lot of athletes have an easier time minimizing deductions with a Maloney-Pak routine,” Field said. He added that, if it were up to him, college gymnastics would require more difficulty. “You look at the athletes on our team—they’re capable of doing much more difficulty in their bar routines, right?” said Field. “But as a coach, you have to weigh the risk versus reward of adding more difficulty in.” The margins for error in gymnastics are razor-thin, with national championships often decided by fractions of a tenth of a point. “Every little teeny thing matters,” Field said. “So the more you can remove the possibility of deduction, the better.”
Gymnasts may also have skills they hope to include in their college routines. For Disidore, one of her favourite skills to compete is her toe-on piked Tkatchev and she hopes to retain this in her college routine. “I think I do it very well” she said.
Last season, Florida ranked 10th in the nation on bars—a result Field wasn’t entirely content with, though he was proud of how the team adapted. “We had some significant changes to our original planned lineups,” he said, referencing Kayla DiCello’s deferral of her sophomore year to train for the Paris Olympics and Riley McCusker’s absence due to injury. “Those are some big scores that you typically would have been counting every week. I think it was really impressive how the rest of the team stepped up and was able to fill those voids and still have a really successful year.” Three freshmen were regular contributors to the bars lineup which goes to show the importance of having routines that work for them and allow them to perform with confidence from the outset of their college career.
Adapting to athletes’ transitions has become increasingly important for college programs as the landscape of gymnastics evolves. Thanks to the NCAA’s name, image, and likeness (NIL) rules, which allow domestic athletes to profit from their personal brands, elite gymnasts no longer have to choose between maintaining college eligibility and accepting sponsorships. “I don’t think you’re going to see as many people drop back (to level 10) as early as they would before,” said Ball. “So I think you’ll see a lot more elite athletes pushing through the end of their careers right into college and transitioning, at least that’s been the feedback we’re getting here with the last two recruiting cycles.”
Ball said this trend hasn’t been a significant challenge for Oklahoma, which historically has had fewer elites than other championship-winning teams. “Probably 50% of highly sought-after level 10s in the recruiting cycle are high-placing JO national team members or elite athletes who decide not to pursue the full elite gymnastics tour,” he said. “The gap isn’t as great as people think it is, because those kids are still really good athletes.”
He also highlighted the shift in focus when elites transition to college. “In college, the focus shifts to execution and being perfect, versus being in survival mode. That’s the main thing for elites transitioning into college,” Ball said. “For level 10s, it’s the same goal—getting them to execute their best gymnastics at the highest level they can.”
It’s clear that routine construction in collegiate gymnastics is a careful balance of individual strengths and team strategy. Programs like Oklahoma and Florida demonstrate how adaptability and precision are key to success. As gymnasts transition from level 10 or elite, they learn to blend personal goals with team priorities, creating routines that fans love to see week after week.
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Article by Katie Couldrey
