With week one of the 2025 college gymnastics season finally here, it’s a great time for all the at-home judges and fans to review the rules.
Your first stop is the newly updated College Gym News Code of Points, which you can find in our NCAA Gym 101 dropdown from the home page. This incredible resource has been revamped and updated for the 2025 season, including to special requirements, tables of common NCAA elements and their values, and the most common execution, composition, and artistry deductions. For a summary of the rule changes for the 2025 season, check out this article.
NCAA gymnastics rules are based on the published NCAA Rules and Modifications, which are the official rules in conjunction with USA Gymnastics’ level 10 rules. As you can imagine, there are sometimes points of confusion for both coaches and judges with the hundreds of different rules and infinite number of routine combinations and situations. To help, judges and coaches can submit questions to the NCAA Rules Interpreter, with the answers being published every two weeks along with clarifications. I reviewed the notes and pulled out some of the most notable ones for the 2025 season.
Notable Clarifications
Equipment FailuresThe beam cap controversy from last year has been clarified: A beam cap falling off the end of the beam is not considered “equipment failure,” which would not make the athlete be eligible for a do-over if it falls off. This clarification is no doubt included after Leanne Wong was allowed to redo her dismount after she fell on her first attempt and the beam cap became dislodged.
Floor Music Voices
Gymnasts are no longer allowed to use real or synthesized human voices at all in their floor music.
Side Saltos
On floor, gymnasts are expected to perform both backward and forward or side saltos. To be considered a “side salto,” the skill has to take off from two feet. For example, if an athlete did a double pike in her first pass, a whip through to double tuck in her last pass, and a traditional side somi with a one-foot take-off, she would not receive credit for a forward/side salto and would lose one tenth in composition.
Final Saltos
On floor, it’s clarified that any salto after the last acro pass would be considered the final salto of the exercise. For example, if an athlete did a standing back tuck to one knee, her last salto would be considered an A value and would not meet the special requirement for a minimum of a C as their last salto or salto combination.
Evaluation Points of Note
Finally, each season the judges are required to attend two NCAA clinics, where the clinicians review the rules, as well as practice score routines on every event. I attended these sessions and have summarized the evaluation points that were stressed in the clinics.
Vault
The judges again were introduced to the direction lines on the mats but still weren’t given clear guidelines of how to apply the up-to-three-tenth deductions based on where they land in relationship to the lines. The clinician stressed evaluating the height and dynamics of the vault by watching and listening to the overall trajectory. She also stressed how to consistently apply deductions for piking down in layout vaults and failing to open in tuck/pike vaults to help differentiate between good and great vaulters.
Bars
The clinicians stressed the expectations for height, rotation, and body positions for several common transitions and single-bar releases, with the hope judges will use some of the amplitude, rotation, and body position deductions.
Beam
I was very happy to see the clinician encouraging judges to be more strict with broken connections. In the examples, she showed several routines with broken dance and acro connections and 9.8 or even 9.6 start values. While I would love to see this, I’ll believe it when I actually do.
Floor
There’s a new special requirement requiring athletes to tumble on both diagonals of the floor, which adds a new challenge for judges to pay closer attention to the overall floor pattern. Also, with it being a bit more difficult to get six tenths in bonus with a two-pass routine, we may see additional D dance elements. Hopefully, the judges will pay close attention to the rotation of the turning leaps and jumps to deduct when appropriate.
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Smith cranks out 10.0s on beam like no one else this season. For this routine, she has her typical bent arms on her back handspring and bent leg on her front aerial that never get deducted. But she was also a little off on her back handspring swing down. She moves through it quickly, but you can see she’s a little off to one side. I’m not exactly sure which deduction would apply, which makes sense why the judges didn’t take it, but it was an error.