tumbling, tramp, diving, acrobatics, circus, cheer, dance, martial arts, X sports …
January 28th, 2012 | Gymnastics, NCAA
Oh Stanford…what’s going on with you? Do you need to talk to someone? A parent or guardian or trusted adult? …
Something’s going on with this team and it’s not pretty. …
I’ll bet they wish they had Canadian hero Kristina Vaculik back. She’ll be returning to the team Sept. 2012. 
Recall that Stanford was ranked #1 much of last season before being knocked out of NCAA Championships by mighty Kent State.
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4 comments ↓
UCLA equally disappointing with a 194.60 loss to UW (195.35).
I went to both Stanford’s home meets this year and they have some issues. They don’t have a strong vault lineup. From memory, the best vault this season is Ivana Hong’s 9.8 (don’t know Stanford’s scores versus OSU). The bars rotation is solid probably the only rotation that they have that can consistently go over 49. The beam rotation isn’t as near as good as last years where Stanford’s beam rotation had them in the top 5. The floor rotation is weird with some of the scores making me think that they are not doing routines that are of a 10.0 start value.
It could be a pacing issue where they are trying to avoid an injury meltdown like they had at the end of last season. Who knows? Stanford is pretty bad about getting information out unlike other teams. It could be people dealing with injuries and this is the best they have.
The big name freshman they have are being led by Becky Wing she competed in both home meets in three events, bars, beam and floor. She’s gone 9.9 in bars already and 9.875 on beam. Her floor routine is a sassy routine set to middle eastern, think Egyptian, type of music. She needs to clean up a few things there but is in the 9.775 range. She’ll be a great collegiate gymnast I think. Sam Shapiro has done bars both home meets and was in the 9.75 range and was second in the lineup. A little work on her handstands and that could easily go 9.85. Ivana Hong competed only one vault but it was a 9.8. I have no idea why she hasn’t done beam or floor, I’m guessing lingering knee issue but again the dearth of information from Stanford makes it hard to know what is going on.
As for Kristina Vaculik, she had issues last year. In the four meets I saw in person for Stanford last year she had a fall in each meet and multiple falls in several. She had a rough time transitioning to the lower difficulty of collegiate gymnastics. I think her focus was keeping her difficulty up to help Team Canada. That being said I’m glad she was able to help Canada to the Olympics and hope that she makes the team for the Olympics. She seems like a nice person.
I asked one of the guys on the men’s team. He says they look good in training, have had some bad breaks are are letting some injuries heal.
Feels they will be OK by the “playoffs”.
Right. I had predicted Kristina would be one of the top AA last year … yet she had a disappointing season.
She was shockingly great in Tokyo and London. I still feel she’ll be one of the top NCAA AA over the next few years, as will Peng Peng Lee for UCLA.
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