Have you ever wondered about the geography of college gymnastics? You’re not the only one! This is the second installment of a new monthly series, where we’ll answer all of your gymnastics geography questions. These maps will range from informative, to analytical, to light-hearted and fun.
This month, we’re mapping hometowns. Using roster data from Road to Nationals, we mapped hometowns of over 11,000 incoming freshmen from 2000 to 2025. We wanted to know where hometown hotspots are and if they have changed over the last twenty-five years. Please note that there may be errors in this data due to misspellings and missing or incomplete information on rosters. International towns are generally missing from this map.
Hometowns have a similar geographic distribution to the map of college gymnastics programs that we published last month. The densely populated northeast stands out across all years of data, as do Chicago and Minneapolis. Despite the number of big-name gyms in Texas, the state doesn’t overpower other areas on the map. While Dallas, Houston, and Austin are all visible each year, the Dallas area stands out more consistently starting after 2010. In California, the Los Angeles area has become a brighter hotspot in recent years. Compared to the older hometown maps, the more recent maps show freshmen coming from a wider variety of cities and towns.
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Article by Jill Walsh
