(GYM) Gymnastics 2024 - 2025

Televised Meets of Interest in Women's Gymnastics Week 1:

Friday, January 3: #32 Iowa State at #2 LSU, 6:30 CT, SECN - First look at LSU 2025 without the services of elbow injured Haleigh Bryant.

Sunday, January 5: #13 Michigan at #12 Denver, 5:00 ET, ESPN2 - Two evenly matched teams squaring off in week 1. I have Denver at #10 in my top 10 preseason ranking. We'll see if the Pioneers can pull off the home win against the Wolverines.

EDIT - This from College Gym Fans:

Women's Kickoff Weekend - Friday, January 3rd, 2025

Time Meet Stats Video
6:00 pm CT Ball St, Ill St, SEMO at Missouri Link SECN+
6:30 pm CT Iowa State at LSU Link SECN
7:00 pm MT Utah State at Utah Link ESPN+

 

Overview of Updated Gymnastics Rules and Judging Clarifications:

An Overview of Updated NCAA Gymnastics Rules and Judging Clarifications for 2025 - College Gym News

Notable Clarifications
Equipment Failures: The 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.

 

Short, sweet, and covers what needs to be known in the 2025 season.

 

That's like landing on a trampoline, but it looks to me like Skye is working to get herself ready at some point in the 2025 season.



LSU's Konnor McClain is a month ahead of Skye. She performed on bars and beam last night. She looked to be protecting herself on her bars dismount taking a 1 1/2 step deduction, scores: bars 9.800 and beam 9.825. That's not bad for Konnor's first live performances since mid-May 2024.

 

Week 1 Friday Opening Night Scores of Interest:

LSU 197.300 - 12 performed. It looks like the Tigers will have 3 AAs when Haleigh Bryant returns: Haleigh Bryant, Aleah Finnegan, and Kailin Chio. Chio is a true freshman who is destined to be a superstar. Her first college meet yielded 39.575. By comparison, Haleigh Bryant scored 39.600 in her first college meet.

I realize it is the first meet of the season, but what I watched last night would have been slightly below the 2024 LSU standard and would have been with Haleigh Bryant performing. I'm glad I changed my preseason prediction to UF #1 with LSU #2 and Oklahoma #3.

Utah 196.775 - 10 performed. The Red Rocks have 3 AAs: Grace McCallum, Makenna Smith, and Avery Neff. Neff was the #1 recruit in the 2024 class choosing Utah over Oklahoma. She had an uninspiring opening meet for Utah scoring 38.725.

Missouri 196.700 - 14 performed with 1 AA. There were two who performed 3 events. The rest of the squad are specialists, three 2 event and eight 1 event performers.

 

Week 1 Saturday Scores of Interest:

Oklahoma 197.550 - When the Sooners imploded on the vault and had to count a fall on the beam in the 2024 national semifinals, they were using an experienced lineup of 9 with 4 AAs. In the Sooners opening meet of 2025, the Sooners used 8 with 5 AAs, 3 veterans, Jordan Bowers, Audrey Davis, and Faith Torrez, and 2 true freshmen, Addison Fatta and Lily Pederson. Freshman Elle Mueller performed on bars.

As I speculated coming into the season, for the #1 ranked team in the nation, the Sooners have little margin of error for injuries or just getting worn out in the week-to-week grind of college gymnastics. This is especially true in that OU gets no breathers now that they are in the deep SEC plus are playing a national schedule.

The Sooners have 14 available gymnasts due to 2 injured gymnasts, one for the season and one likely for the season. Looking at the opening meet, OU is depending on 9 routines from their true freshmen. At some point like last season in the national semifinals, the 8 gymnasts counted on to carry the team will likely crash. I look forward to OU being shown the exit door early again in 2025.

Michigan State 196.850; Nebraska 194.475 - Both teams are coming to the O Dome next Friday night along with Northern Illinois. The MSU Spartans will be the challenge in UF's opening meet as they have a good opening week score to work on improving.

California 196.275; UCLA 195.250 - Both underscored to their potential. I have UCLA in my top 10 so this low score is a big surprise even for an opening meet.

 

The Sunday meet of the day is a good one, Michigan at Denver:

2:45 pm MT Michigan at Denver Link ESPN2

This meet can be watched on ESPN2 this afternoon. Enjoy.

EDIT:

Let me just say that we might not fully appreciate what we have with our UF gymnastics program which is excellent.

Georgia and Missouri go to Denver next week. It'll be interesting to see how much Denver improves from week 1 to week 2.

 

Disagree with College Gym News 2026 Team Recruiting Rankings:



Florida should be #1 and Oklahoma #2. The Gators 2026 commitments are rated higher than the Sooners on other sites so it should be UF getting CGN's brownie points for the higher rated gymnasts. CGN has a strong crush on the Sooners even when it is not deserved.

EDIT: See posts 133 & 134 on page 7 for explanation.

 

During the Michigan at Denver ESPN2 broadcast, Trinity Thomas was introduced as the newest member of the ESPN gymnastics broadcast team. When asked about Florida, Trinity immediately responded that the Gators are going to have a great season. Nicely done Trinity.

 

Highlighting the Road to Nationals Top 10 as only 37 teams performed in Week 1:

Top 10 Teams

1. Oklahoma 197.550
2. LSU 197.300
3. Michigan State 196.850
4. Utah 196.775
5. Missouri 196.700
6. California 196.275
7. Auburn 195.950
8. North Carolina State 196.825
9(t). Oregon State 196.775
9(t). Penn State 195.775

There will be plenty of additions and changes after Week 2.

Week 2 features some top meets with Sprouts Farmer's Market televised Friday and Saturday from Oklahoma City getting top billing and Michigan State at Florida along with Nebraska and Northern Illinois televised Friday night.

 

There is no acceptable excuse for not having that meet in Nashville televised.-----I have it 1. UF 2. LSU 3. OU this season. The Sooners are out for revenge when they should be seeking redemption.-----Denver and Michigan both sucked in week 1.