Inside Gymnastics published the best article I’ve seen so far on changes to Collegiate Women’s Gymnastics:
Women’s collegiate gymnastics coaches made the first move to radically overhaul their sport at their annual college coaches’ meetings, held in conjunction with the J.O. National Championships in Washington earlier this month.
After more than three days of heated discussion, the women’s National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches voted to vastly change the NCAA competition format.
First, by adopting a six-up, six-count scoring format for all collegiate competitions and second by reducing the NCAA finals, currently known as the Super Six, to four teams and, if warranted, moving the meet from Friday night to Saturday afternoon in the hopes of gaining live TV coverage from rights-holder CBS. (Twelve teams would still qualify to NCAAs, but only the top two from each prelim session would advance to finals and compete for the title. Regional qualifying would remain the same.)
The latter measure, which reduces the number of teams in finals by two, passed almost unanimously (only one coach, in the end, voted against the radical reduction), while the six-up, six-count scoring idea received only a simple majority.
Both changes are the brainchild of Utah coach Greg Marsden, winner of nine NCAA titles and a passionate advocate for making his sport more accessible to the public. …
It turns out that Florida coach Rhonda Faehn was the sole vote against the 2 main changes.
Florida hosts Championships next season.
photo from Whatever Happened to … Rhonda Faehn
We won’t know until sometime later in the Summer if and when the changes will come into effect.
Many predict they will not be ratified by the NCAA.
I could see the 6-up, 6-count being put into effect soon. The change to a Super 4 Final being made contingent on a TV contract.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 