changes to NCAA Gymnastics?

Perhaps the best gymnastics journalist in the “regular” media is Lya Wodraska who writes for The Salt Lake City Tribune.

In advance of the annual Women’s NCAA Coaches meetings in Seattle this week, Lya speculates on possible changes to the rules.

… As he does every year, Utah coach Greg Marsden is pushing to change the format for the NCAA Championships. His ideal scenario is to do away with the 12-team format and take it to eight teams, which would eliminate the need for byes in the competitions and would take only around two hours to complete instead of 3-plus.

In addition, he’s also pushing for all the routines to count rather than dropping the low score as it is now. He’d also like to see all scores count for teams to qualify for regionals and do away with the tedious regional qualifying scoring system, which is an average of certain road and home scores.

“We need to simplify things and make it more understandable and exciting to the average sports fan,” …

read more – Gymnastics: Format changes could be in future

UPDATE: Interview with Greg Marsden by Anne Phillips of Gymnastike:

CHANGES

What types of things might we consider in order to simplify our rules and procedures in a way that would make our events more understandable and entertaining? Perhaps we could start by counting everything. … Then let’s create a competition format that allows everyone to always know who’s ahead and who’s behind. Let’s make our championship process look more like other sports and let’s create an event that would provide an opportunity for live television coverage.

1. Compete five (or six) routines per event and count all five (or six) scores.
• You may substitute at the end of your line-up if someone cannot finish her routine due to injury, but there will be a 0.5 deduction.
• Counting all routines would make everything much more meaningful, therefore more exciting and allow for more upsets.

2. Average all regular season meet scores to determine post-season qualification.
• Must include a minimum of five away meets
• The difference in ranking by RQS vs. season if minimal….

3. Create a 32-team Championships format.

Four NCAA regional sites:
• Eight teams and individuals will be assigned to each regional site.
• Two sessions on Saturday at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., with four teams and individuals in each session.
• Winners of each session and highest ranking individuals not with a qualifying team move on to Semi-finals at NCAA Championships site.

NCAA Championships site:
• Semi-final sessions will be conducted on Friday at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Top two teams from each session qualify to Finals
• Team finals will be conducted on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. – for live TV
• Event finals will be conducted on Sunday at 2:00 p.m.

(via Inside Gymnastics on Facebook)

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The thing I dislike most about the College Women’s rules is how they judge Finals on Vault in Championships.

Qualify with one vault. Compete two in Finals.

That’s dangerous. Last year my post on the subject I called NCAA Gymnastics Vault Final – DUMB

The 2009 Vault Final was better. Safer. But the winner Ashleigh Clare-Kearney had not trained both vaults regularly during season. It was “throw and go” in the Final.

LSU Sports – Clare-Kearney Makes History with Two NCAA Titles

NCAA really needs to change how they evaluate Vault Finals.