re: Remove

Are there any girls from LSU or recruits that will be competing

My heart just broke for Skye Blakely.

Elite and NCAA are very different but fun and exciting for different reasons. If you enjoy watching more variety and difficulty, elite is up your ally. Team component is obviously not the same as NCAA's, its more individualized unless you are at the olympics or worlds.

Leanne Wong beam. Ouch!

I feel like Biles, Sunisa and Chiles have those 3 spots locked up. Not sure who is going to take that 4th spot.

Shilese hasn’t signed yet so likely not going this year. Poor Skye Blakely, what a bummer.

Is that even allowed? Seems like a major conflict of interest....

From a judging and recruiting perspective.

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My bet is on Grace. She’s really grown on me over the years.

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She is probably the safest bet but Skinner really made a case yesterday. She adds 8 tenths to a team score with her vault. Assuming the team is Biles, Chiles and Lee. Take Lee out of vault and put Skinner in and that’s 8 tenths. Biles and Chiles could do AA and Lee doing FX, UB and Beam in team finals. Skinner would also be usable on FX if needed and while she certainly isn’t ideal, she can go on beam or bars in the event of injury or illness to someone else. Grace is better across all 4 but I’m not sure she can add as much to the team total. It’s normally all about math but not sure how Forster will choose this team.

It doesn’t make sense to look at things from an AA perspective. This is about the team. For the record, Skinner beat Grace in the AA last night. Whether she does it again is another thing. I posted this to FB just recently:

I sat down and crunched some numbers. These are only considering the first night of Trials. I would have to sit down with tomorrow’s numbers to see what changes but I think the team will be announced rather quickly.

I am going off the assumption that Biles, Lee and Chiles are on the team. It would make sense. Looking at the numbers from night one, the only three contenders for the last team spot are Skinner, McCallum and McCusker. Personally, I am not considering McCusker for the team if she can’t compete AA here. It is far too risky to add someone to the team who is injured to the point of only doing one event. She can medal on bars and will be selected for the individual spot (IMO) because of it. If she can compete AA by the Olympics then good for her but I couldn’t put her on the team.

So, between McCallum and Skinner. Looking at night 1 only, both would be used on vault and floor during finals. Skinner would add .733 on vault and .633 on floor compared to the next available team member, Lee. McCallum would add .233 on vault and .933 on floor over Lee. That’s a total of 1.366 Skinner could add and 1.166 that McCallum could add. 2 tenths difference!

So that is extremely close. For the record, McCallum out scored Skinner on bars by .367 and Skinner out scored McCallum on beam by .267 So if you take into the possibility of them having to step in on other events, it’s literally 1 tenth difference!

Night 2 will mean everything.

By the way, Dicello also offers a decent boost on FX and Vault over Lee so if she has a really strong showing tomorrow then she is in the mix.

I don’t think Skinner’s form issues are going to be anything major to change this. She has never been scored loosely just because it was Nationals or Trials. I don’t see her scores falling any more than most just because it is an International competition.