It’s so nice to reach the point of the season where we know what we’re talking about. We’ve got numbers! Analytics! Scenarios! Season highs that we don’t roll our eyes at! Narratives! Dynamics! Trends! Questions! Comments! Concerns! Wait, maybe it’s just me who has those last three.
Question: How many years away from regionals is Penn?
When Penn decided to stop competing at USAG nationals in 2019, the stated reason was to focus on pushing toward regionals and competing at the NCAA level. At the time, that felt quite a long way away. Six years and about a thousand program records since, the Quakers have become at least an outside contender.
Penn is ranked No. 41 right now, and its one home meet score is a season low, so the outlook is good from an NQS perspective. Its scores are relatively bunched together, though; contending this year will probably require at least a few 196-plus meets, and I’d hope to see scores at least escalating toward that level over the next few weeks. It’s also the Ivy Classic this weekend, which is a great opportunity to make a statement.
There’s no rush: Recruiting remains a strength, and this year’s senior class, while useful, won’t devastate the lineups when the gymnasts graduate. The program’s first year even slightly in contention for regionals is a landmark and a big step forward. It might take a little more struggle and a few near misses to finally crack the top 36, but at this point, I believe it will happen eventually. I’m increasingly curious if it might be sooner than eventually, though.
Bonus Questions:
I’m genuinely confused by the Oklahoma-leaving-the-floor-at-LSU discourse. It was so obviously a nothingburger to me; it’s totally normal for athletes to need a moment after difficult losses, and there’s nothing wrong with stepping away. But even if it’s not, isn’t the whole point of Oklahoma being very passionate about winning and very mad about losing? Do we all have to hold hands in a circle like Care Bears all the time?
How is Minnesota good right now? I don’t mean that in the rhetorical sense, like “I can’t believe Minnesota is good!” That part is pretty much what I expected. I just envisioned Minnesota becoming good on the power of a whole load of great freshman routines and the triumphant return of several of the best 2024 freshman prospects who didn’t make an impact in their first year. There are definitely a couple of impactful freshmen, particularly Ava Stewart, who has been very consistent on two events and is making progress on defeating her bars dismount demons. But a decent proportion of the graduated routines have been replaced by routines that were depth options last year and have become really useful, which I’m not mad about at all but also didn’t necessarily expect.
Comment: Boise State bars is so back.
Bars was the engine of Boise State’s climb up the rankings in the 2010s, with that lineup finishing as high as fifth in the country in 2017. Even when the team wasn’t ranking quite as highly at the beginning of this decade, Emily Muhlenhaupt led some remarkable lineups. So it’s been a little odd to see the Broncos looking relatively pedestrian for the last few years on the event that was once their signature and national identity.
Luckily, it seems like the lull is over. The sophomores, always full of potential on the event, are thriving now, and freshman Kristina Shchennikova looks like a viable co-star and eventual anchor successor for Emily Lopez. This bars team is ranked No. 14 right now and looks to be improving. It’s very reassuring. Order has been restored to the universe.
Bonus Comments:
I was wrong about Chloe Cho. I didn’t anticipate her being a megastar in college, but I’m extremely happy to be wrong. I never doubted her gymnastics’ ability to convert to NCAA; she’s always been really attractive on tape, and from the outside, she looked extremely under-recruited, even considering the fact that she was injured her sophomore season. I just doubted Illinois’ ability to get immediate results out of an elite recruit, given my recent track record of favorites going there. But my faith is now completely renewed because Cho has absolutely rocked and is getting better every week.
Let’s not blame the SCOREBoard for scoring starting to slip. It’s not the fault of the program that it’s more or less been blocked from doing anything that could possibly help.
Concern: We’re not paying enough attention to Auburn.
Lost in the shuffle of the Alabama versus Arkansas for the SEC champs outlier chatter is the fact that last year’s regular season bottom finisher isn’t currently in the mix for that spot at all. Auburn’s excellent freshman class definitely indicated this year would have a lot of potential, but there was reason to question whether the elite freshmen would be able to immediately adapt to the consistency and landing precision demands of college gymnastics. Obviously, they did just fine. One important part of Sunisa Lee’s legacy at Auburn is that since her, the Tigers have recruited many more elites, and the success on that front this year makes me optimistic for the prospects of athletes like Charlotte Booth and Brynn Torry in the near future.
It sucks that Marissa Neal seems to be hurt right now, but I’m going to give her credit for her great first month; plus, the team doesn’t seem to be particularly hampered by her absence. Auburn has also impressed me with the relative ease with which it bounced back from Olivia Hollingsworth’s injury.
Last year had a lot of great moments for Auburn, but everything felt just a little more difficult and unpredictable. I’m liking the understated, steady energy this team seems to have.
Bonus Concerns:
LSU has to figure out road meets next. There’s a lot for LSU fans to get excited about so far this season, including two of the top three team scores in the country and an emphatic defeat of Oklahoma, but scoring a 198 and dropping in the rankings this week was a reflection of the importance of significantly lower road scores for NQS, not an arbitrary mathematical quirk. There’s plenty of opportunity in the coming weeks to fix that and continue establishing itself as a frontrunner for the national title.
This level 10 season has been super strange. Most of the heavy hitters did ultimately make it to the Nastia Liukin Cup, but there were more upsets and flukey bad meets than I’m accustomed to seeing, as well as the usual smattering of presumed injuries (that we never get clarity about because, to be fair, that’s not really a thing for high school athletes). Some of the big qualifier meets felt a little cursed, with the majority of the big contenders having errors. I also suspect we’re significantly behind last year’s pace of 39-plus scores, though I admittedly haven’t counted.
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Article by Rebecca Scally
