Tracy B on Couch Gymnast:
As an Australian gymnastics fan, opportunities to experience live gymnastics at the highest level can be few and far between, with the national championships usually the solitary annual event. So you can imagine my excitement when my holiday to the USA happened to cross paths with the 2013 NCAA National Championships at UCLA. Having only really being introduced to the college gymnastics format in past couple of years, I was still unaware of the grand scale of college gymnastics events.
… I discovered almost a whole new world of gymnastics. The differences between the elite and college world were obvious and plentiful, but more importantly, enjoyable. I saw gymnasts laughing, cheering and dancing with their teammates, bursting to the rim of school pride. But most enjoyable for me, was the focus on team spirit and camaraderie, which with so few team competitions in the elite world, is not often appreciated.
… right from the start, the favourites faltered on beam, you could feel the disbelief in the stadium as everyone tried to calculate if it was even mathematically possible for them to recover from counting a fall. …
And just as Hollywood would have written it, it came down to not only the last rotation, but also the last couple of routines. One stuck landing, one wobble, one fall. As everyone’s eyes darted around the electronic scoreboards which framed the arena, desperately calculating who had done enough. And who had just fallen short. …
Gymnastics Coaching.com 