Monday, April 8, 2019

Re: [gatortalk] Gymnastics under Rowland.

It's true that Alyssa Baumann includes a very difficult skill called an Onodi, Rachel Gowey does a triple series that is amazing, difficult, and extremely risky, and Trinity Thomas does one acrobatic series one-handed where most gymnasts use two hands.  They are high-risk routines, no doubt.  The gymnasts who fell Saturday night were Megan Skaggs, who doesn't have quite as much difficulty in her routine, and Alicia Boren, who lost her balance on an element that actually was after the most difficult part of her routine.  You have to remember, this is a 4" wide thing they're doing all this craziness on, and it just takes a landing a few centimeters off before you're fighting to stay on

The Gymnastics booster club was able to get some individual Q&As with Coach Rowland and the assistant coaches this year, which was great.  One of the questions that came up was about difficulty in routines, and in the Q&A with Adrian Burde, he said they often have to tell the gymnasts that some elements will have to get edited out, as they are going for a balance of difficulty and consistency with each routine.  He said it's hard to convince them at first, but then they see the logic, especially since NCAA scoring is so different from Olympic/Elite.

People always forget that even the greatest NCAA gymnasts of all time will fall.  I remember Bridget Sloan falling off the beam, her favorite event and one she hadn't fallen off of all year, the first night at Nationals in 2014, eradicating her chances at competing for the All-Around title.  I remember Kytra Hunter "going over" on a handstand during the uneven bars at SECs in 2013.  I also remember that this team under Jenny Rowland ended third at Nationals last year - higher than anyone would have expected, considering the inconsistent year they had, and competing without Kennedy Baker, who got injured at the last regular season meet.  I remember that team was possibly a Kennedy Baker away from actually winning it, if she'd been there to compete.



On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 2:50 PM Jerry D. Belloit <belloit@clarion.edu> wrote:

I am not a gymnastics expert and I have not been able to watch that many matches this year.  However, I have noticed that on the balance beam, we seem to be doing high risk/return routines.  I am not sure if we would not have been better off with some slightly scaled down routines.  It seems to me that the extra points gained may not be worth falling off of the beam.

 

Jerry

 

From: GatorTalk <gatortalk@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Sandy Alonso <sandyalonso66@gmail.com>
Reply-To: GatorTalk <gatortalk@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, April 8, 2019 at 2:07 PM
To: GatorTalk <gatortalk@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [gatortalk] Gymnastics under Rowland.

 

I respectfully reply here: nope.

 

I'm a very committed gymnastics fan, and I've watched this team all season - every single meet save Arkansas, which wasn't broadcast (and I wasn't going to Fayetteville to see).   Friday was a "big stage" night and they absolutely killed it on beam, plus had extremely good scores on floor and bars as they have all season.  On Saturday, they outscored themselves on vault (one of their best team vault scores all year), and were not as crisp on bars and floor (49.425 on each apparatus; anyone will tell you a team scoring 49.4 on each event is a championship-caliber team).  Unfortunately, after Amelia Hundley's respectable 9.775 on beam (a little low for her; s/b around 9.8 - 9.85), Rachel Gowey and Alicia Boren both fell off the beam, so UF had to count a score.  Once that happened, the pressure was ratcheted up big-time on the remaining beam performers to not stumble.  They didn't, but the pressure led to lower scores all around, so right out of the gate, UF was 1.5 points behind their normal "pace" for a meet.  Throughout the season, she's done all the right things: such as resting gymnasts here and there during the season to avoid injury or wearing them out (Elite and Level 10 gymnasts only compete 4 or 5 times a year; NCAA gymnasts compete in 9-15 meets in a season less than four months long).  Two of the three assistants (Adrian Burde and Jeremy Miranda) were here with Faehn, only Owen Field is new.  There is nothing that happened on Saturday that was on account of a lack of training, discipline, or proper encouragement from the training staff.  This team has been stronger than any Faehn team I can recall on beam, which is the least forgiving of the apparatus.  Some times the athletes can't execute.  It just happens.

 

Just a reminder; even Rhonda Faehn missed the Super Six in 2011 with an exceptionally talented team.  The next year, that team lost to Alabama in the finals just by a hair before going on to three back-to-back national championships.

 

Another thing of note: this is the first year with a new format; if this had been the old format, nobody would be groaning that UF missed nationals, as they would have qualified to go to Dallas and compete to be included in the Super Six (final).

 

 

 

On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 2:55 PM Charlie <ces1948@gmail.com> wrote:

Gymnastics seems to be slipping a bit under Rowland. The ladies don't seem to do as well on the big stage.

Charlie

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