re: Salt Lake City Regional Final Gym Meet Threadl/ LSU and Utah Advances to Nationals

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So does this mean Beam is the best event now?

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Judges at nationals are gonna score hammer tonights beam in the 49.200-49,300 range at best. A lot of checks, breaks across the board that weren't deducted.

LSU had some amazing beam teams over the years with Finnegan, Hambrick Gnat, Macadaeg, etc and we were maxing out at a 49.500 then, this team isn't even close to that level.


We are what we are at this point. Two weeks isn't gonna fix all the issues we have. All we can do is try to do our best at nationals and hope others falter some.

T357, you (and others) have noted this for some time. Why would the coaches continue to go the route of overly complex routines?

Seniors need to go????? They wouldn't have advanced without them. What are you talking about????

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The narrative that we're doing so much difficulty is false.

The real story is that we're not doing the basics right.

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But we are performing elements that we are completely inconsistent on in competition and thats the point. If you cant hit on meet day, does it matter that you can during intersquad?

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It's not even as if we're doing WAY more difficult gymnastics than the other teams.

Utah' beam lineup has a LOSO-LOSO, and 2 Aerial-LOSO series.

Michigan has plenty of LOSO-LOSO triple series and 2 double back dismounts.

So many teams are doing difficult Van Leeuwens on bars.

The narrative that we're doing so much difficulty is false.

The real story is that we're not doing the basics right.

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Its part of the problem but not the only problem. We are putting skills into routines that kids can't hit.

As you said, we struggle to do the basic things correct. Kids aren't developing very much outside of vault. Something should be changing in the training because kids across the country are polishing up routines and we look the same as we did earlier in the year.

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Seniors need to go????? They wouldn't have advanced without them. What are you talking about????

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I never said that. I actually gave the seniors extreme props for tonight. May want to double check the post I quoted to take that energy elsewhere.

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No, we are doing too much difficulty. Just because other teams are also doing difficulty doesn’t mean we arent doing too much. If we had girls who could do the extra difficult with no deductions and consistently then it would be fine. But they aren’t. Gymnasts are falling having breaks on switch halfs that don’t need to be done. Bryant fell 3 times this season on a front double full as a dismount when she already has an E pass mount. Alyona is praying for a decent dismount when she could do something easier with the same SV. I could go on and on. So yes, we absolutely are doing TOO much. That doesn’t need to be compared to other teams to be true.

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You (and TB357) are right, of course.

It's just that the difficulty card seems to be played so often as if we're the only team doing difficult skills, which is patently false.

I wish Jay and the coaches would pay attention to little things like cast 1/2s on bars, showing clearly rotated leaps on floor, open hips on leaps etc.

And of course routine construction. Just have Brock mounting the bars facing the LB for goodness sake!

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You (and TB375) are right, of course.

It's just that the difficulty card seems to be played so often as if we're the only team doing difficult skills, which is patently false.

I wish Jay and the coaches would pay attention to little things like cast 1/2s on bars, showing clearly rotated dance series on floor, open hips on leaps etc.

And of course routine construction. Just have Brock mounting the bars facing the LB for goodness sake!

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My position is if the kid can do the difficulty with good form overall and some type of consistency, I'd be okay with it. The issue is we have kids doing skills with sloppy sloppy form and just expect to get good scores, just isn't how it works. Some of this comes back to recruiting and some of it also comes down to how we are polishing kids in this program. If we could polish kids on other events the way we polish them on vault, this program would be in a much better situation.

I know Jay has been successful as a bars coach over the years but I'm disappointed with his management and development of bar workers this year.

Don't know what to think of Gnat, I have strong feelings but I don't know how much control her or Jay had year one. All I know is they need to make adjustments to the routine construction and our training regimen. Something is clearly wrong mentally when half the lineup is having major checks and arm waves throughout all our beam performances this year. That tells me that are not confident or in the zone mentally while competing.

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Sorry, I replied to the wrong one. I'll go back.

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All good. I love our Seniors, but they were rough yesterday. However, tonight when we needed them most, they showed up. They deserve all of the respect. Hope they can build from this in two weeks.

LSU gets that same shitty draw for nationals. I hate that for them, although I’ve accepted that LSU is not a final four team. It will take others to make mistakes to make it. Unfortunately, they just never progressed and got better throughout the season unlike the other top teams.