As women’s collegiate gymnastics has grown in popularity over the last decade, there has been an undeniable upward trend in scoring, with calls for judging reform increasing every season. The scoring in college is almost entirely based on USA Gymnastics’ Development Program Optional Code of Points, so today we are taking a look to see whether the same scoring trends are evident in development program level 10 scores over the last decade.
Methodology
We took all level 10 scores from the 2015-2025 seasons, excluding the 2020 season since it ended before the typically high-scoring postseason meets, removed all 0 scores from the dataset, and then calculated the scores that represented the 50th, 75th, and 99th percentiles on each event for each season. A percentile tells us what percentage of a dataset is below a certain value; for example, if a 50th percentile is 9.600 that means that 50% of the data is below that number. We chose this method because it is a simple way of showing trends over time, by showing how the percentile changes each year. For the purposes of this analysis, we defined a “season” to end at level 10 nationals in May, so scores from the fall are included in the following year’s season.
Results
Since the most talked-about aspect of college scoring increases occurs at the top end of the scores, we first examined the 99th percentile of level 10 scores on each event, which means that 99% of scores were below this threshold each season.
While the 99th percentile remained steady over the first few seasons in our analysis period, bars and floor rose significantly between 2018 and 2021 and have increased the most overall. Interestingly, bars scoring in this calculation peaked in 2023 and has fallen since then, while the other events have remained steady or slightly increased during that period. Vault saw the lowest overall increase over the last decade, with only a half of a tenth of a point.
Looking next at the 75th percentile of scores on each event, we see some similar trends, albeit at a smaller scale. Scores in this range were once again largely steady between 2015 and 2018, with the largest increases occurring between 2019 and 2021. Fluctuations have occurred since 2021, but there have been no major increases since then. We once again see a downward trend in bars scoring between 2023 and 2025.
Our final examination is the 50th percentile, where fluctuations are seen over the last 10 seasons, but there is no overall upward trend. The decrease on bars after 2023 is once again present, but the net change over the entire analysis period is only a quarter tenth of a point. Beam has a quarter tenth increase over that period, while vault and floor are at the exact same level as in 2015.
Conclusions
There has definitely been an upward trend in level 10 scoring over the course of the last decade, according to this percentile analysis. However, it appears to mostly be limited to the higher end of the scores rather than being equally distributed throughout the entire dataset. The largest increases occurred between 2018 and 2023, with scores staying mostly stable in 2024 and 2025. Of the four events, bars and floor have seen the highest increases during the analysis period, with vault and beam seeing less significant gains. However, there has been a notable decline in bars scores over the last two seasons that is apparent throughout the entire dataset, not just among the highest scoring gymnasts. Given that the current code of points took effect in the 2022 season, we cannot attribute this decline to any known code or judging changes.
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Article by Jenna King
