Author: Rick Mc

Nikolai Andrianov, the great Soviet gymnast, died last year at only age-58. After a long painful illness.

NY Times obituary

In honour of his memory, click over to the Facebook page for Miracles for MSA. And like.

Thanks for your time.

related – Facebook Group Fights to Create Awareness for Rare Neurological Disease

That show is back.

… I’d watch an edit that ONLY includes gymnastics scenes. Otherwise, I prefer the real life drama of Storage Wars. 🙂

USAG has done a terrific job this season communicating stories from American Collegiate gymnastics. Here are the the champions and links to results from super Saturday March 24th, 2012:

Big 12 Championships – Oklahoma Sooners 197.475

Big Ten Championships – Nebraska

EAGL Championships – West Virginia University season-best 196.475

ECAC Div. I Championships – University of Pennsylvania edges Towson University 194.400 to 194.375

ECAC Div. II Championships – University of Bridgeport women’s gymnastics team won its fourth consecutive title

MAC Championships – Central Michigan best team-score of the season with a 195.675 edging out Kent State 195.225

MIC Championships – Illinois State gymnastics dominated

MPSF Championships – UC Davis claim its third straight title

NCGA Div. III National Championships – Brockport Women’s Gymnastics team finished in a tie for first-place with University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Pac-12 — In front of 19,374 people at the Huntsman Center, UCLA claimed the first-ever Pac-12 Gymnastics Championship 197.425.

SEC Championships – No. 1 Florida 197.150 in front of 7,170 fans at The Arena at Gwinnett Center (same venue to be used for Championships)

WAC Championships – Denver

USAG – Collegiate conference champions crowned on Saturday

1st place. Diana Chelaru 14.375 (5.8 + 8.575)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I think the aspect ratio is off on that video. But I’m loving the historic music. And the energy.

(via Diana Chelaru – fan site)

Is anyone else in the world doing this dismount? Or is it the exclusive of Sacramento State?

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via College Gym Fans – Superlatives)

Crazy difficulty. 7.5 start score

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I had the strangest dream …

While her National Teammates Brittany Rogers & Dominique Pegg were winning medals at Cottbus, Jessica Savona went 14.10 on Bars.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

She’s training much more, including something Tweddlesque — Hindorf (E) … to mixed grip, to connect to Ejova (D).

Click PLAY or watch the first part on YouTube.

Coach Lorne Bobkin.

I can hardly wait for Nationals in Regina, May 21-26th. They’ll be all kinds of speculation as to who’s going to perform their way on to the Olympic Team.

There’s not much. Even less in 2012 than ever before, despite the available technology.

Who’s judging the judges?

Case in point. Vault Judge #2 was singled out as biased by an Alabama fan who did some analysis of scores at SEC Chammpionships.

Judge 2’s total score for each team as compared to actual are shown below:

Florida + .175
LSU + .325
UGA + .175
Kentucky + .20
Arkansas + .10
Alabama minus .225
Auburn +.15

This lady threw out 3 2 perfect 10s to LSU, for … gosh sakes. She went out high on every team — except Alabama.

Read the entertaining thread on College Gymnastics Board – Never has ONE JUDGE so deserved to be called out

That judge should be reprimanded, in my opinion. But if you’d like to defend Mary’s scores, please leave a comment.

The truth of NCAA Gymnastics scoring is that it works well at ranking 12 gymnasts in a dual meet, but does not have enough variation in range to rank more than two teams.

The solution obvious to me is to allow gradations of 0.05 in post-season competition.

Here are the final rankings before Regionals:

26 March 2012 – by Regional Qualifying Average

1 Florida
2 Oklahoma
3 UCLA
4 Alabama
5 Nebraska
6 Georgia
7 Oregon State
8 Utah
9 L.S.U.
10 Arkansas
11 Stanford
12 Ohio State

see the rest on GymInfo

More interesting – Greg’s Unofficial Top 36 Regional Qualifiers:

The Regional hosts are bolded in the list below.

1-12-13 trio: Florida, Ohio State, PSU

2-11-14 trio: OU, Stanford, DU

3-10-15 trio: UCLA, Arkansas, Boise State

4-11-16 trio: Bama, LSU, Arizona

5-8-17 trio: NU, Utah, Minnesota

6-7-18 trio: UGA, Oregon State, Auburn

College Gym Fans

By Greg’s calculations, the #36 team to qualify will be Central Michigan University. 🙂

BeamMeUpBama concurs.

… all this, yet to be officially confirmed.

Same weekend, USA age group gymnasts were qualifying to Junior Olympic Regionals. Here are a couple of guys moving on to their “playoffs”.